Instacart and Shipt Introduce AI-Powered Grocery Cart Assistants with Different Benefits

On September 9, both Instacart and Shipt unveiled AI assistants designed to build grocery carts from prompts or photos. Instacart highlighted that orders placed via its assistant tend to include more items than the average $115 basket, suggesting increased basket size and value. Meanwhile, Shipt positioned its feature as a tool to alleviate the mental effort involved in shopping, focusing on ease and convenience rather than order value.