Albertsons Companies is enlarging its partnership with OpenAI to introduce AI into both customer-facing services and internal workflows. The retailer is using ChatGPT Enterprise, the OpenAI API and other OpenAI-powered capabilities for personalized shopping experiences, data-driven recommendations and promotional insights.
What’s being rolled out?
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Safeway experience in ChatGPT: shoppers can begin from a recipe, photo, digital list or a simple prompt (for example, “Plan pizza night for four”, “Put together a quick dinner from the deli”, or “Restock breakfast foods and snacks using store brands”). ChatGPT then surfaces relevant products and savings, helps build a cart, and directs customers to Safeway to complete checkout.
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Internal productivity pilots: selected teams are using ChatGPT Enterprise and other AI tools to streamline work, speed decision-making and accelerate moving promising ideas into production.
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Data-driven merchant tools: Albertsons is combining predictive models with generative AI to provide explainable, data-backed recommendations and promotional insights to help merchants weigh business considerations.
Why it matters
Albertsons notes that retail depends on countless small decisions—what to promote, how to assist associates, what developers should build next, or what’s for dinner. Embedding AI into these areas connects customer needs to operational choices and aims to reduce friction in everyday shopping.
Scale and objectives
Albertsons operates more than 2,200 stores under brands including Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco, Shaw’s, ACME and Tom Thumb, serving over 36 million customers each week. The Safeway ChatGPT experience builds on Albertsons’ existing AI shopping assistant and Ask AI features and is intended to expand to other banners over time.
Consumer attitudes and next steps
According to dunnhumby’s February 2026 United States Consumer Trends Tracker, shoppers are more open to using AI for grocery purchases than for other categories. Albertsons’ approach is to develop capabilities in focused areas first, evaluate what works, create repeatable practices, and then scale successful solutions across the organization.
Jill Pavlovich, Senior Vice President, Digital Customer Experience at Albertsons Companies, said: “This is another practical way we are using AI to reduce friction and make everyday shopping easier.”
Summary
Through its expanded use of OpenAI technologies, Albertsons aims to provide customers with more personalized assistance for basket-building, reordering familiar items and meal planning, while delivering explainable, data-driven support to merchants and employees. The company plans to extend OpenAI-powered tools from customer apps to employee tools and advertising solutions, with the goal of faster development, better decisions and easier grocery shopping across its store network of more than 2,200 locations serving over 36 million customers weekly.
