Uber Eats is rolling out a new AI-powered tool aimed at making grocery shopping inside the app much faster. Announced Wednesday, the feature is called Cart Assistant, and it’s now available in beta.
Cart Assistant is designed to remove the most time-consuming part of ordering groceries: searching and adding items one by one. To try it, customers open the Uber Eats app, search for a grocery store, and tap the purple Cart Assistant icon on the store’s page to start building a cart.
The new chatbot supports multiple ways to shop. Users can type in a grocery list as text or upload an image of their list, and the tool will automatically add the items to the basket. That also includes photos of handwritten notes and even screenshots of recipes that show ingredients—letting Cart Assistant translate what’s on the screen into an actual grocery order.
After the cart is created, shoppers can still fine-tune everything. You can swap items to match your preferred brands, adjust quantities, or add extra products from the same store before checking out.
Uber Eats says Cart Assistant also uses your past orders to prioritize familiar picks, such as the milk or oatmeal you usually buy, making the experience feel more personalized and reducing the need to reselect the same staples each time.
Uber’s CTO, Praveen Neppalli Naga, said the company built the feature in response to customers asking for a quicker way to shop, positioning Cart Assistant as a way to go from an idea to checkout in seconds.
The launch also highlights how competitive the grocery delivery and food ordering space has become around AI features. Rival platforms have been exploring AI-powered search and chat experiences to help customers shop faster and get more tailored recommendations. Uber Eats, which has already experimented with AI integrations to streamline ordering, appears to be expanding that push with a tool focused specifically on grocery carts.
Cart Assistant is also part of a broader wave of AI investment at Uber Eats. The company has been developing AI tools to support merchants as well, including auto-generated menu descriptions, improved food imagery, and summarized customer reviews—features meant to make menus easier to browse and listings more appealing.
With Cart Assistant entering beta, Uber Eats is betting that faster, more automated grocery shopping—especially through list and image recognition—can save customers time, boost convenience, and keep the app competitive as AI becomes a core feature across delivery services.
