Dive Brief:
- Albertsons announced Wednesday a Safeway plugin in ChatGPT that lets customers discover products and build a shopping list in the artificial intelligence platform.
- The plugin experience aims to take the requests and preferences customers put into ChatGPT and show them relevant Safeway options. When shoppers are done using ChatGPT to browse and add items to their cart, they are redirected to the Safeway platform for checkout.
- This tie-up with ChatGPT builds on Albertsons’ efforts to strengthen its digital customer experience — something the grocer said at the start of this year is one of its four AI priorities for 2026.
Dive Insight:
Albertsons said that the new plugin for ChatGPT builds on the company’s larger “AI-powered shopping foundation,” which also includes the grocer’s AI shopping assistant and Ask AI capabilities.
To access the Safeway plugin, customers type “@Safeway” into ChatGPT followed by a prompt such as “Reorder my weekly shopping list,” “Help me plan a quick pasta dinner for four” or “What ingredients should I add to my omelet?”
From there, ChatGPT presents relevant items that shoppers can purchase from Safeway. Users can add or remove suggested items and, when they are ready to purchase, are redirected to the Safeway e-commerce platform for checkout.
“Research tells us that consumers are increasingly interested in using AI to help with grocery shopping,” Jill Pavlovich, Albertsons’ senior vice president of digital customer experience, said in a statement, referring to Dunnhumby’s 2026 Consumer Trends Tracker. “By enabling our plugin in ChatGPT, we are making grocery shopping as simple as having a conversation by meeting our customers when and how they choose to shop. This is another practical way we are using AI to reduce friction and make everyday shopping easier.”
In that report, which was published in February, Dunnhumby found that 15% of the U.S. consumers surveyed said they had used AI tools like ChatGPT to assist with grocery shopping, with shopping lists and price comparisons as top use cases.
This new plugin isn’t Albertsons’ first time leveraging the OpenAI platform. In February, Albertsons said it had joined a pilot program run by OpenAI to explore how conversational advertising formats presented through ChatGPT can drive better customer experiences.
Albertsons is also incorporating AI directly into its own platforms. In December, the company launched an agentic AI shopping assistant on websites across its banners, noting that the tool would come to its banners’ apps in early 2026. The tool can generate meal plans and shopping lists, reorder frequent purchases, find recipes based on what users already have, import recipes from images and curate product ideas based on themes.
