Instacart Ups AI Capabilities for Better Personalization
Instacart is taking a closer look into consumers’ carts and potential carts with new high-tech tools. The online grocery delivery platform is rolling out Smart Shop technology that leverages generative AI and advanced machine learning models to better understand customers’ shopping habits, household preferences and dietary preferences to provide them with ideas for relevant products.
The Smart Shop technology, powered by Instacart’s catalog of 17 million items and its dataset of millions of grocery shopping journeys, combines information on consumer preferences, refined through sophisticated large language models, with gen AI to connect people with products for a more personalized experience.
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“Whether you're navigating dietary preferences or exploring healthier options, Smart Shop takes the guesswork out of grocery shopping by presenting items that match your unique lifestyle and goals. With every shop, Smart Shop dynamically adjusts based on your choices, continually learning and improving to refine its recommendations,” explained Daniel Danker, chief product officer at Instacart, in a blog post on the Smart Shop launch. “The result? Less time spent searching for what you need and more time enjoying the moments that matter.”
Among other smart features, this capability is built with an AI-driven Health Tag system that covers 1.3 billion data points across about 500,000 food and beverage products in the Instacart catalog. That data is used to provide shoppers with fast, understandable information on items they are browsing.
Instacart also added new Inspiration Pages, personalized pages that highlight products that match health and dietary preferences. The first Inspiration Page was created in collaboration with the American Diabetes Association and was timed for National Nutrition Month in March.
“With Smart Shop technology and Health Tags, we’re giving consumers the power to personalize their experience, with tools to filter and discover the best options for their unique preferences,” said Sarah Mastrorocco, VP and general manager of Instacart Health. “Our collaboration with the American Diabetes Association takes this a step further by turning expert nutrition advice into easy, shoppable solutions through our Inspiration Pages.”
Users can also set preferences manually by selecting from 14 common diet and health descriptions in the Smart Shop preferences section on the Instacart experience. For example, they can express interest in low calorie, low sodium, lactose free, high fiber, high protein, preservative free, pescatarian, vegan and vegetarian offerings.
Grocery technology company Instacart partners with more than 1,500 national, regional and local retail banners to facilitate online shopping, delivery and pickup services from 85,000-plus stores across North America on the Instacart Marketplace. Maplebear Inc. is the registered corporate name of Instacart.
