Tesco trials AI assistant to help customers with meal planning

Tesco has launched a large-scale trial of an AI assistant designed to help customers with planning meals.

Around 280,000 Tesco employees are to be offered early access to the assistant, which is linked to information gathered through purchases made through the grocer’s Clubcard information and will help with building shopping baskets.

Colleagues will test the assistant over the coming weeks and give feedback, and have been asked for suggestions for a name for it, before it is eventually launched to all customers later this year.

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.

Customers will be 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 will 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”.

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

Tesco chief executive Ken Murphy said: “We want to give customers the best possible experience every time they shop with Tesco, and this assistant gives us one more way to help them and make their lives a little easier.

“In the long term, this assistant has the potential to transform the way people shop with us – harnessing the power of AI to personalise the shopping experience for our customers in ways that ultimately save them time and money.

“Nobody is better placed than our colleagues to help us get this experience right; they understand the customers and communities they serve, and we cannot wait to see how they help shape and improve the assistant in the months ahead.”