A Loblaws grocery store in Ottawa. Loblaw has announced that it will be integrating Loblaw’s PC Express grocery delivery app into ChatGPT.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
Last fall, when artificial-intelligence company OpenAI published a study on how people around the world use its chatbot ChatGPT, one data point stuck out to Loblaw Cos. Ltd. L-T chief digital officer Lauren Steinberg.
Among the topics the study found, in an analysis of 1.1 million conversations – everything from requests to edit text, to language translation, to fitness advice – people were using the service for cooking and recipes. That was the moment Canada’s largest grocer saw an opportunity.
On Thursday, Loblaw announced a new commercial partnership with ChatGPT Enterprise that includes integrating Loblaw’s PC Express grocery delivery app into ChatGPT.
“More and more people are looking to applications like ChatGPT to explore recipes and plan meals and make decisions,“ she said. ”So, for us, rather than asking Canadians to change their behaviour, our approach is, we’ll adapt to it.”
The partnership means that users can enable Loblaw’s app within ChatGPT, which will allow them to speak to PC Express inside the chatbot. If they ask ChatGPT for a recipe, for example, and then ask PC Express to find the ingredients, the service could stock a virtual cart with those products for pickup or delivery from their nearest store. If they click “check out,” the customer would be directed to the PC Express website or app to complete the transaction.
2023: AI goes shopping: How artificial intelligence will reshape the customer experience
OpenAI launched these kinds of apps within its chatbot last October, and brands such as Expedia, Spotify and OpenTable have already partnered with the service. Grocery-delivery platforms such as Instacart and DoorDash have also launched shopping apps with ChatGPT, but the service is still in its early stages with retailers.
“No grocery retailer has built what we have today,” Ms. Steinberg said. “We’re the first to do it this way.”
The growth of AI has presented new challenges for retailers. Shoppers who for years have turned to Google searches looking for what they need are now asking AI agents for advice. That means, in the same way companies have honed their ranking on search engines, many of them are working on being easy to find through chatbots.
For Loblaw, the ChatGPT partnership is just the first of more work to come with AI agents. The company “may be” planning partnerships with other services, Ms. Steinberg said. Loblaw is also looking at how to expand its presence for other products it sells, beyond groceries.
For example, the ChatGPT analysis last fall found that 5.7 per cent of conversation topics touched on health, fitness, beauty or self-care. That is an opportunity for Loblaw-owned Shoppers Drug Mart, which has a robust e-commerce presence and is one of the country’s largest beauty-product retailers.
Even conversations about cooking and recipes – which accounted for just 0.9 per cent of topics in the study – represented significant volume in the context of the number of prompts ChatGPT receives, Ms. Steinberg said. Open AI has said it now has more than 800 million weekly active users.
“As these tools start to develop, we want to make sure that we’re learning with the very best,” Ms. Steinberg said. “The scale that an OpenAI has, we’re able to learn global patterns and then interpret them for Canadians, and take the very best and what works, and then apply it here.”