Bringing Inspirational, AI-Powered Search to the Instacart app with Ask Instacart

At Instacart, AI has been central to everything we do for years: from matching Shoppers to available batches and delivery windows to helping customers find the right replacements for low-stock items and serving up personalized ads that match exactly what customers need, AI powers the Instacart experience from start to finish. And with the rapid innovation in generative AI, we believe we can create new personalized, inspirational, value-driven shopping experiences that enrich peoples’ relationship with food and how they engage with the retailers and brands they love. Today, we’re starting to roll out Ask Instacart, a first-of-its-kind AI-powered search tool designed to assist with customers’ grocery shopping questions – saving them time, inspiring their routine, and helping them make food-related decisions by offering personalized recommendations throughout the shopping experience. 

A simple question like ‘What’s for dinner?’ is among the most complex for families everywhere to answer. From decisions about budget and dietary specifications to cooking skills, personal preferences, and so much more, Ask Instacart can help customers answer all of their food questions and deliver the ingredients for the perfect meal in as fast as an hour. Whether it’s, “What’s the best fish for tacos?” or “What should I make for a Memorial Day BBQ?,” by supercharging Instacart search with generative AI we can create a truly inspiring experience that unlocks even more opportunities to engage and help customers as they shop online from their favorite retailers.

Ask Instacart leverages the language understanding capabilities of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and our own AI models and unique catalog data that spans more than a billion shoppable items across more than 80,000 retail partner locations. Available to more than half of Instacart customers today and scaling to all U.S. customers over the coming weeks, Ask Instacart is a reimagined yet still familiar search experience directly embedded in the search bar in the Instacart app, providing customers with product recommendations that are intuitively organized, as well as additional useful information about food preparation, product attributes, dietary considerations, and more. The newly enhanced search experience also incorporates personalized question prompts into the search bar that anticipate customer preferences, remind them of their needs based on their shopping history, and inspire them to discover new products.

With Ask Instacart, customers will be able to:

• Better understand what ingredients or dishes pair well with others, like, “What kind of side dishes should I serve with lamb chops?”
• Discover alternative ingredients that can be swapped for one another, like, “What fish is similar to salmon?”
• Get more information on cooking techniques, like, “What are good sauces for grilling chicken?”
• Generate lists of ingredients if they have a meal in mind, like, “What can I use in a stir fry?” 
• Learn more about item attributes so they can get personalized dietary inspiration, like, “What are dairy-free snacks for kids?”
• Discover broader, context-specific inspiration for more open-ended queries, like, “What are the best veggies to roast?”

Further adding to the new experience, Ask Instacart will help match consumer needs – through the questions asked – with brand partners’ sponsored product campaigns, creating an even more convenient way for people to discover new products and access the products they already know and love.

The Ask Instacart launch comes as part of a growing suite of new AI-native initiatives that we’re working to roll out over the next year and beyond. In March, we debuted an Instacart plugin for ChatGPT, which lets ChatGPT users express their food needs in natural language, with our ability to make those needs instantly shoppable with ingredients delivered to their door in as fast as an hour.

At Instacart, we know that generative AI technology is still in its early stages, so Ask Instacart is a highly specialized model designed to only respond to relevant food-related questions. We’re committed to incorporating AI features into our products in a responsible manner, with a goal of enhancing the overall Instacart shopping experience and delivering more food inspiration to customers. 

JJ Zhuang

Author

JJ Zhuang is Chief Architect at Instacart, where he drives key technology and architecture decisions across all Instacart product pillars and ensures engineering investments are aligned with the company’s long term business strategy. Prior to Instacart, Zhuang was a Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft and led Office365 app technology. He was also a co-founder and CTO of Acompli where he co-created the app that Microsoft acquired and adopted as the modern mobile Outlook. He also served in Chief Architect roles at VMWare and Yahoo! Zhuang graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University with a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering.