UK’s largest supermarket develops AI-powered shopping assistant to offer personalised recipe ideas and automated basket creation
Retailer Tesco plans to launch a new AI assistant, which it says will help its millions of customers to compile their shopping lists.
Launched today as a beta trial among 280,000 of the group’s employees, the feature is built into the group’s mobile app and offers personalised recipe ideas via a two-way dialogue.
If successful, the personalised app feature will be rolled out later this year.
Customers will then be able to choose a recipe and have a virtual assistant help them to build their shopping basket by finding suitable products.
It will apparently also take into account their shopping history, preferences, dietary requirements, and even any leftovers they have at home.
“In the long term, this assistant has the potential to transform the way people shop with us – harnessing the power of AI to personalise the shopping experience for our customers in ways that ultimately save them time and money,” commented Tesco CEO Ken Murphy.
“Nobody is better placed than our colleagues to help us get this experience right; they understand the customers and communities they serve, and we cannot wait to see how they help shape and improve the assistant in the months ahead.”
Tesco’s in-house app, data science, and engineering teams began working on the virtual assistant last autumn with UK-based consultancy Tomoro AI , which was founded in 2023, in alliance with OpenAI.
The retailer has doubled the size of its technology team over the last five years as it looks to improve the customer experience, and Tesco also recently signed a three-year strategic partnership with European AI start-up, Mistral, to develop new AI capabilities.
