Uber Eats introduced Cart Assistant, an AI-powered feature, on Wednesday, releasing a beta version within its app to accelerate grocery cart assembly for customers.
To activate the assistant, users locate a grocery store in the Uber Eats interface and tap the purple Cart Assistant icon displayed on the store’s page. The purple icon appears directly beneath the store’s header, signaling the assistant’s availability for that location.
The assistant accepts either a typed list or an uploaded image, supporting photographs of handwritten notes and screenshots of recipes or ingredient lists. The uploaded image undergoes optical character recognition, converting handwritten or printed text into searchable product names.
Upon receipt, Cart Assistant automatically populates the basket with identified items, after which users may replace items with preferred brands or add additional products from the store. Quantity adjustments are possible before finalizing the basket.
Video: Uber
The system references customers’ prior orders to prioritize familiar products, such as a regular milk brand or a favorite oatmeal, enhancing personalization. Items that appear most often in a customer’s order history receive higher placement in the suggested list.
‘Users were telling us they wanted a quicker way to shop, and we know how precious your time is,’ Uber CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga said, adding that Cart Assistant moves shoppers from idea to checkout in seconds. The statement emphasizes speed as a primary design goal.
Competing platforms have introduced comparable AI tools:
- Instacart: Launched an AI search tool powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2023 to provide personalized shopping recommendations and reduce time spent browsing.
- DoorDash: Tested an AI chatbot named DashAI in 2023, aiming to streamline order creation through conversational prompts.
Last year both Uber Eats and DoorDash integrated ChatGPT to streamline ordering; Uber Eats enables U.S. users to browse local restaurants and menus within ChatGPT and finalize purchases in the app. The ChatGPT integration is limited to users in the United States, where the conversational interface links to the Uber Eats ordering system.
DoorDash’s integration allows users to request meal plans and automatically adds required ingredients to the DoorDash cart. The automatic addition covers all ingredients required for the suggested meal plan, eliminating manual entry.
