Albertsons Expands OpenAI Partnership With Safeway in ChatGPT

Safeway shopping enters ChatGPT

Albertsons Companies is expanding its work with OpenAI across a grocery network of more than 2,200 stores that serves over 36 million customers each week. The partnership includes ChatGPT Enterprise, applications built with the OpenAI API, and a new Safeway experience in ChatGPT designed to help shoppers move from a meal idea to checkout.

The experience lets customers begin with a recipe, a photo, a digital list or a plain-language request. Prompts can include planning pizza night for four, assembling a quick deli dinner, or restocking breakfast foods and snacks with store brands. ChatGPT then surfaces relevant products and savings, helps create a cart, and directs the customer to Safeway to complete checkout.

Jill Pavlovich, SVP of Digital Customer Experience at Albertsons Companies, said the initiative is intended to reduce friction and make routine shopping easier. The Safeway launch builds on the retailer's AI shopping assistant and Ask AI capabilities.

Retail workflows and customer commerce

Albertsons is extending AI use beyond the customer-facing shopping journey. Digital shopping, store operations, fulfilment, merchandising and customer experience rely on systems that teams must continually build, test and improve. The company is using ChatGPT Enterprise and other AI-powered tools with select teams to streamline work, improve decision-making and identify practices that can be scaled.

Its approach begins with focused capabilities rather than a single enterprise-wide deployment. Albertsons says this enables teams to evaluate what works, establish repeatable practices and form a foundation for wider innovation. Technology teams and business functions are using OpenAI-powered applications where the company believes AI can make a meaningful impact.

For the customer side of retail, the company is exploring more personalised help with basket building, repurchasing familiar items, and recipe and meal planning based on preferences and information provided by shoppers. The Safeway experience is planned to extend to other Albertsons Companies grocery banners, including Albertsons, Vons, Jewel-Osco, Shaw's, ACME and Tom Thumb.

Recommendations designed to be explainable

Behind the scenes, Albertsons is combining predictive models with generative AI to produce explainable, data-driven recommendations and promotional insights. The company says these tools can help merchants weigh business considerations and make more informed decisions. Its wider set of OpenAI-powered capabilities also spans employee tools, commerce applications and advertising solutions.

The announcement places the consumer interface alongside internal operating work: a shopper can use natural language to assemble a grocery basket while retail teams use AI to accelerate workflows and assess promotions. For businesses, the practical implication is to test AI in defined customer and employee tasks, measure what proves repeatable, and connect successful use cases to existing checkout and decision processes.