Tesco rolls out AI customer assistant following trial

Tesco has started to roll out an AI assistant designed to help customers plan meals following a trial with around 280,000 employees.

The UK’s biggest supermarket began trialling the assistant, which is linked to information gathered through purchases made using the grocer’s Clubcard, in April before starting to expand it out to customers last month.

Tesco chief executive Ken Murphy said: “We are also making strong progress on AI-enabled personalisation, extending Your Clubcard Prices and beginning the customer rollout of our meal planning assistant, helping customers manage their busy lives.”

In April, Tesco said the assistant would initially help customers with meal planning by providing a “natural, two-way dialogue to offer inspiration in the form of personalised recipe ideas”, taking dietary preferences into account.

Tesco said AI had been ‘behind the scenes’ of its operations, including its Clubcard loyalty programme ‘for years’ (Jonathan Brady/PA)

PA Archive

Customers are able to search for meals based around cost or type of cuisine, or both, and create a dish by listing items they already have at home that they would like to use up.

Tesco said the assistant’s use of Clubcard information would mean it would be able to advise customers on what they may already have in their cupboard or fridge.

The feature would be built into the Tesco app as part of a long-term plan to expand its functionality “so it can help customers with more parts of their day-to-day lives and provide them with a genuinely intelligent, helpful shopping experience”.

Tesco said its in-house teams had been working with Tomoro AI - a UK-based AI consultancy founded in 2023, in alliance with OpenAI – on the development of the new assistant, with the work taking place under “strict secrecy protocols” since autumn last year.

It said AI had been “behind the scenes” of its operations, including its Clubcard loyalty programme “for years” to “improve the overall shopping experience”.

Sainsbury’s announced this week that it had launched an AI-powered SmartLists feature within its app (Peter Byrne/PA)

PA Wire

The retailer has doubled the size of its technology team over the last five years and has signed a three-year strategic partnership with European AI start-up Mistral to develop new AI capabilities.

This week, Sainsbury’s announced it had launched the AI-powered SmartLists feature within its app to help customers plan their shop, create a shopping list, find products more easily in store and manage their budget with Nectar prices.

SmartLists lets customers create shopping lists by typing or taking a photo of what they need, matching the list to Sainsbury’s products.

Items can then be added straight to the trolley for online orders.

Sainsbury’s product director Ben Edge said: “We know our customers are busy and want shopping to feel simple, joyful and easy to fit around their lives.

“SmartLists is designed to take the effort out of creating and buying a shopping list, whether customers are typing, speaking or taking a picture of what they need.”