Instacart and Shipt launch AI shopping assistants
Two leading online delivery platforms are both introducing new artificial intelligence tools designed to help grocery shoppers.
Instacart and Shipt have both introduced AI-based shopping assistants designed to help customers more easily determine, find and purchase the grocery items that will suit their needs. Details of each solution follow.
Instacart – Clementine
Clementine, available on the Instacart app and website, is designed to streamline and personalized grocery shopping for users. Built on data including 1.6 billion lifetime orders, a catalog of more than 2 billion items, and more than 10 million daily inventory signals from nearly 100,000 stores across more than 2,200 retail banners in North America that partner with Instacart, Clementine analyzes what is available on store shelves for order in real time.
With that information, Clementine can generate personalized recipes on the spot or surfacing curated options from trusted publishers, suggest purchases based on individual customer preferences, surface relevant deals and recommend lower-priced alternatives, enable automatic reorders based on commands such as “shop my usuals,” and create tailored shopping lists based on conversational language requests such as “items for a football watch party for 20 people.”
In addition, users can upload a photo of a handwritten list or screenshot a digital one and Clementine turns it into a list that can be added to a shopper’s cart in seconds.
According to Instacart, early results show customers start with simple tasks like restocking then move up to higher-order use cases like recipe discovery. On average, the company says orders placed with Clementine include more items than its typical basket and exceed its $115 average basket size.3
"What we built with Clementine is a system that understands not just what you need, but how you eat, what you love, and what's on the shelves at your store right now,” said John Adams, VP and head of product at Instacart. “Whatever you're craving or planning for, Clementine can get you there. The more you use it, the more it feels like a natural part of how your household shops, becoming something you reach for week after week."
In addition, Instacart that Food Bazaar, Heritage Grocers Group and Woodman's are now live with its Cart Assistant white-label agentic AI in-store shopping assistant, with Aldi U.S., Harmon's, The Save Mart Companies, Stew Leonard's, and additional grocery retailers to follow.
[READ MORE: Kroger introduces in-store agentic AI shopping with Instacart]
Shipt – Ask Shipt
Available now on the Shipt app and site, Ask Shipt enables customers to describe what they're looking for or upload a photo to build a fully customized cart in seconds. Customers can set budget limits for their carts and maintain complete control. Every recommendation can be reviewed, swapped, or edited before checkout.
To use Ask Shipt, after selecting their preferred retailer from the Shipt marketplace, customers can click Ask Shipt beneath the search bar to get started by entering a prompt, uploading a recipe or sharing a photo of a meal they would like to recreate. In seconds, Ask Shipt generates a personalized cart.
"At Shipt, we're focused on making shopping feel more personalized, intuitive and helpful to families with their day to day lives," said Katie Stratton, chief growth & strategy officer at Shipt. "Ask Shipt brings people-centric AI directly into the shopping journey, helping members move from inspiration to a personalized cart in moments. Whether they're planning family meals, preparing for a celebration, or tackling everyday errands, shoppers can discover the products they need across Shipt's marketplace of more than 100 retailer partners with greater ease and confidence."
In other AI-assisted offerings, Shipt lets customers shop through the ChatGPT and Claude agentic AI platforms and provides a one-click cart builder feature called “Shipt Kits” that provides product bundles curated around happenings such as sporting event watch parties and summer cookouts.
Shipt also plans to soon roll out “Shared Lists,” a collaborative tool for family members, roommates and friends can contribute in real time to a shopping list that can be turned into a cart with a single click.
Target acquired Shipt for $550 million in 2017 and it is an independently operated, wholly-owned subsidiary of Target Corp.
