Instacart and Shipt launch AI-powered shopping assistants to build carts via chat or photo
Instacart and Shipt each announced on Wednesday the release of AI-powered shopping assistants that let shoppers create grocery carts through conversation or an uploaded image. Instacart’s Clementine can generate recipes, pull existing ones, highlight savings and automatically reorder items, while Shipt’s Ask Shipt can identify dish ingredients from a photo and build a party meal plan within a set budget.
Clementine learns from a shopper’s past preferences and the items they’ve already bought on Instacart, and it bases product suggestions on real‑time inventory at the chosen store. Instacart said the tool can follow a household’s typical food choices and honor dietary settings such as gluten‑free or organic when making suggestions. More retailer partners — Food Bazaar, Heritage Grocers Group and Woodman’s Markets — have begun offering Instacart’s Cart Assistant on their sites, with Aldi U.S., The Save Mart Companies and Stew Leonard’s slated to add it soon. Ask Shipt lets shoppers review and edit the AI‑assembled cart before checkout, and the company plans to roll out a Shared Lists feature that lets multiple users contribute to a single list that can become a cart, building on its August AI integration with ChatGPT and Claude.
“Every night, millions of families ask the same question: ‘What’s for dinner?’ Not knowing the answer, let alone what to shop for, is one of the most universal human experiences, and a problem Instacart is built to solve,” Chris Rogers, CEO, Instacart said.
“From AI-powered shopping experiences to new collaborative tools like Shared Lists, we’re building practical innovations that fit naturally into everyday life,” Smrutha Ipparthi, Chief Technology and Product Officer, Shipt said.
Instacart had previously introduced Cart Assistant for retailers’ websites almost a year before launching Cleme
What we know
Instacart and Shipt separately announced Wednesday the launches of artificial intelligence-powered shopping assistants.
Along with filling an online grocery cart, Clementine can generate recipes, pull already published recipes, suggest savings opportunities and automatically reorder items.
Instacart also announced Wednesday that more retailer partners — Food Bazaar, Heritage Grocers Group and Woodman’s Markets — have started offering the Cart Assistant.
In the Wednesday announcement, Shipt said it will soon launch a feature called Shared Lists, which will let multiple people contribute to a shopping list that can be turned into a cart.
In August, Shipt announced an AI integration with ChatGPT and Claude.