ChatGPT Craze: Instacart's Grocery App Now Features AI Chatbot

Trisha Kae Andrada, Tech Times 02 March 2023, 02:03 pm

Instacart, a grocery delivery service, has integrated OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot technology into its app.

This makes Instacart one of the many businesses that have begun using the lifelike artificial intelligence (AI) language tool to improve their automated customer care, marketing, and other processes.

AI Integration on Instacart App

The San Francisco-based company said on Wednesday, Mar. 1, that it would utilize a chatbot to power a new search engine that will react to customers' inquiries about food. These prompts include requests for recipe ideas and materials or suggestions for healthy meal alternatives.

According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Instacart announced that it would be using ChatGPT's language software to transform search engine responses into a conversation rather than a traditional list of results.

The "Ask Instacart" function will be released later this year.

It requires a lot of forethought and preparation to go food shopping, according to JJ Zhuang, Instacart's principal architect. Decision-making elements such as family finances, health and nutrition consequences, seasonal food, culinary abilities, and meal preparation times are all examples of the ideal use scenario for smart AI since it is a lot of cognitive load.

He said Instacart's AI engine would be integrated with ChatGPT to access data from more than 1.5 million goods carried by 75,000 grocery retailers in its partner network.

The software integration, as Zhuang put it, is experimenting with what's possible by integrating ChatGPT into the Instacart app.

According to a memo sent out to staff members on Tuesday, Feb. 28, Instacart reported a 16% increase in sales volume to $29 billion in 2022 from 2021. In the fourth quarter, it earned more than $100 million in adjusted profits before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.

Expanding the Market

OpenAI, a 2015 San Francisco software firm, has simplified ChatGPT integration with other applications to increase its reach.

Greg Brockman, OpenAI's president, chairman, and co-founder, said it enables firms like Instacart to develop solutions on ChatGPT's technologies. He described OpenAI as a developer platform that offers a "killer app."

OpenAI introduced changes to its application programming interface (API) on Wednesday, including protocols for connecting apps with the newest AI models for ChatGPT and Whisper, OpenAI's speech-recognition tool.

The AI company gains by feeding user data back into its AI models to constantly train and enhance the algorithm. Although since Wednesday, businesses have had the option to stop OpenAI from using their data this way.

ChatGPT for Business Apps

Since November 2022, OpenAI's ChatGTP interface has spawned several ChatGPT-integrated commercial uses.

Snap released its My AI chatbot on Tuesday, using ChatGPT's API. Last month, OpenAI investor Microsoft integrated the chatbot into Bing. Meanwhile, the e-commerce website maker Shopify is also testing the AI bot.

Brockman stressed the need for organizations to weigh the risks associated with their intended uses of ChatGPT technology. High-stakes situations arise when giving medical or personal advice, he added.