Ordering Groceries With an AI Agent, Like OpenAI’s Operator

Instacart Continues to Drive the Future of AI, Leaning Into Agentic Tools 

If you’ve ever wished someone else would order your groceries–and you’re an OpenAI ChatGPT Pro subscriber–you’re in luck. With the introduction of AI-powered agentic tools like OpenAI’s Operator, which launches today in an early research preview, you can fill your fridge, prep for a party, or send a care package through Instacart with just a few clicks.

Ordering Instacart with the help of an AI agent empowers customers to outsource the complexities of planning and shopping with a simple, natural language request, like, “I’m having an Italian-themed party. Can you get me a linguine and clams recipe, and then go fill my Instacart grocery cart with what I need?”. Whether planning a dinner party or managing a weekly meal prep, AI agents can perform tasks autonomously, acting on your behalf to curate the perfect shopping list and ensure everything is delivered right to your door.

As a company, we’re driving innovation in the AI space by building our own tools as well as sharing feedback with leading AI developers on their efforts. Our unique combination of grocery and retail selection, delivery scale, and deep understanding of our customers’ preferences makes us uniquely positioned to be the de facto platform that AI agents enlist to turn a user’s food needs into ingredients delivered to their doorstep in less than an hour: 

• Leading selection: Grocery is an inherently local problem, and we have the largest selection of grocer partners—more than 1,500 retail banners and more than 85,000 stores—across North America. By leveraging Instacart’s real-time understanding of product availability and prices, an AI agent can serve customers wherever they are with the best combination of assortment, inventory, and price.
• Deep personalization: With the most extensive models in grocery from data built over 12+ years, we understand customer preferences, from habits (no pulp orange juice) to dietary preferences (dairy, gluten-free). An AI agent using Instacart benefits from the LLM and benefits from Instacart’s brain, which means customers get the products they prefer and that meet their needs. 
• Delivery scale: Convenience and speed are inseparable. When a customer places an order, more than 50% of the time, one of Instacart’s more than 600,000 shoppers is already at or near the store, ready to fulfill an order. AI agents using Instacart can leverage our scale to quickly get the order to the customer.

We’ve long embraced AI to transform the grocery shopping experience as we work to make every interaction faster, smarter, and more personalized. AI powers the Instacart experience from start to finish, whether helping customers find the right replacements for out-of-stock items, serving up personalized ads that match customers’ preferences, or matching Instacart Shoppers to available batches and delivery windows. 

Our commitment to enhancing the grocery shopping experience extends beyond the online experience. Our AI-powered Caper Carts bring the personalization of online shopping into physical stores. By integrating advanced AI systems and real-time data, these carts recognize items instantly and offer relevant suggestions on digital screens, creating a more convenient, personalized, and seamless in-store shopping experience.

We’re deeply committed to embracing the rapid innovation in the AI space, and we’re putting AI to work to help us transform grocery shopping, both online and in-store. With Instacart and the power of AI, grocery shopping will become even more seamless and personalized — no matter how you choose to shop.

Instacart

Author

Instacart is the leading grocery technology company in North America, partnering with more than 1,500 national, regional, and local retail banners to deliver from more than 85,000 stores across more than 14,000 cities in North America. To read more Instacart posts, you can browse the company blog or search by keyword using the search bar at the top of the page.