Uber Eats Takes on Instacart With Cart Assistant

The Uber Eats app will soon include a new artificial intelligence-powered beta feature that can build a grocery basket from text or images.

When using this new Cart Assistant feature, users can type a shopping list; describe what they would like to make (such as “pancakes from scratch”); or upload an image such as a photo of a handwritten shopping list or a screenshot of recipe ingredients. Cart Assistant will generate a list from those inputs, Uber said in a Wednesday (Feb. 10) press release emailed to PYMNTS.

While it builds a grocery basket, Cart Assistant will prioritize items from users’ past orders, making the experience faster and more personalized, according to the release. It will also take into account availability at the store and will show prices and applicable promotions.

Users can then edit the list by swapping out selections or adding items from the store, and then place the order, per the release.

Cart Assistant will be launched Wednesday, according to the release. At launch, it will be available at several chain stores in the United States, including Albertsons, Aldi, CVS, Kroger, Safeway, Sprouts, Walgreens and Wegmans. Over time, more companies and capabilities will be added to the feature, per the release.

“Cart Assistant reflects how we think about AI at Uber: starting with real customer needs and building practical solutions within the app,” Uber Chief Technology Officer Praveen Neppalli Naga said in the release. “By grounding these features in real user behavior, we can build tools that feel helpful and intuitive.”

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said during a November earnings call that generative AI now touches nearly every part of the platform as the company is “embedding intelligence across Uber Technologies to enhance productivity, optimize our operations and deliver more personalized consumer experiences.”

Another delivery app, Instacart, has added AI features too. Instacart said in December that it became the first grocery sector company to launch an app on OpenAI’s ChatGPT. In November, the company announced its Cart Assistant, saying this AI assistant would bring conversational shopping to Instacart’s marketplace and retailer sites and help consumers build carts, manage dietary needs and plan meals.