TL;DR

Morrisons has created a chief AI officer role and hired Mohsen Ghasempour to fill it. He moves from the same post at Kingfisher, owner of B&Q, on 1 October. PwC UK has given the same title to Jez Bassinder, who returns after almost three decades at IBM. Two large UK employers filling the post at around the same time suggests AI is moving from project teams to the executive level.

A new function at Morrisons

At Kingfisher, Ghasempour led the group that built up the retailer’s AI capability and rolled it out across its European businesses. He had previously worked in senior technology jobs at The Hut Group. His first job at Morrisons is to build a single, central team for AI and data science. It will be accountable for the supermarket’s whole data and AI agenda, with customer growth named as the focus. He will report directly to chief executive Rami Baitiéh.

Baitiéh said the post shows Morrisons wants to adopt data and AI “at pace, with focus and in the right way”. Ghasempour said his job is to build a team that helps the business “make effective and responsible use of AI” for customers and staff.

The reporting line matters. A chief AI officer who answers to the chief executive, rather than sitting under a technology director, is placed to shape strategy across the business, not just run pilots.

PwC’s version of the role

PwC UK’s appointment faces outward. Bassinder began his career at PwC and, in his last IBM role, ran its UK and Irish consulting practice for generative AI. His brief is to combine the firm’s industry and technology specialists to help clients find where AI pays off and put it into everyday operations. Claire Reid, who oversees technology and innovation at PwC UK, framed the hire around clients moving “from experimenting with AI to embedding it”.

That fits a wider shift at the Big Four, which are also rebuilding graduate training as AI takes on entry-level work.

Looking forward

The two appointments show what the job covers on each side of the market. Morrisons wants in-house ownership of AI strategy; PwC wants to sell help with the same problem to other companies. For UK firms without a chief AI officer, the question is less about the title than about who, at board level, owns the data and AI roadmap. Ghasempour’s first months will show whether a grocer can turn a new function into measurable customer growth.