Uber Eats Launches AI Tool for Grocery Shopping 🛒

We’re slowly reaching a point where it’ll hard to do anything online without AI stepping in somewhere 🤖.

Hi there, and welcome to another issue of The Ecom Press 🗞️!

This week, Uber Eats rolls out an AI assistant to speed up grocery carts 🛒, Walmart finds itself in court over alleged counterfeit products ⚖️, and OpenAI adds another retailer to its growing ChatGPT ads pilot 👀

Plus, we’ve got a quick workshop showing you how to build a full Shopify store using Shopify’s new AI builder in minutes 🚀.

Lets dive in, shall we 🏄?

In a rush? Here's the juice🤭:

🛒 Uber Eats launches AI tool for grocery shopping.

🧑‍⚖️ Walmart gets sued over alleged counterfeits.

📣 Albertons signs up for ChatGPT ads.

🛠️ Workshop: Build your store with Shopify’s new AI.

⚡️Worthy Mentions

🛒 Uber Eats launches AI tool for grocery shopping.

Uber Eats has launched Cart Assistant, an AI-powered grocery feature designed to help users build baskets faster inside the app. The beta rollout allows customers to generate full grocery carts from typed lists or uploaded images, reducing the steps between planning and checkout.

Here’s the lowdown ⬇️:

🛒 From list to cart in seconds: Users select a grocery store in the Uber Eats app and tap a purple Cart Assistant icon. They can then type their shopping list or upload an image, such as a handwritten list or a screenshot of recipe ingredients. The AI translates that input directly into a populated basket.

📦 Real-time store intelligence: Cart Assistant factors in store-level availability, pricing, and active promotions before adding items. This means users see relevant substitutions and live pricing upfront rather than discovering gaps at checkout.

🔁 Editable and personalized: After the cart is generated, shoppers can swap items or add products manually. The system also prioritizes previously purchased items, using order history to speed up repeat grocery buying.

🤖 Early move toward agentic AI: Uber describes this as a beta and positions it as an early example of agentic AI inside the app, focused on automating practical tasks rather than adding surface-level AI features.

Why it matters 🤔

If customers can upload a recipe screenshot and instantly generate a cart, then search behavior changes. For ecommerce operators, this suggests that growth may increasingly depend on being part of habitual lists and repeat behavior rather than winning attention during browsing. 

🧑‍⚖️ Walmart gets sued over alleged counterfeits.

Estée Lauder has filed a lawsuit against Walmart in California federal court, alleging counterfeit versions of its fragrances, skincare, and haircare products were sold through Walmart.com and its third-party marketplace. Walmart says it has zero tolerance for counterfeits and will respond in court when served.

Here’s the scoop 🍨:

⚖️ What Estée Lauder alleges: The complaint claims Walmart’s site offered lookalike goods tied to brands including Tom Ford, Le Labo, Clinique, La Mer, Estée Lauder, and Aveda, with branding described as identical or confusingly similar to official trademarks.

🧴 Which categories are involved: Reported examples include fragrances (Tom Ford, Le Labo), skincare (Clinique, La Mer), and hair accessories (Aveda brushes).

🏷️ Marketplace liability is the center of the fight: Estée Lauder argues Walmart does “very little” to ensure marketplace authenticity. It also claims Walmart’s listing design can make shoppers reasonably believe Walmart is the seller, and points to Walmart’s own language about vetting sellers to argue Walmart permitted and selected who sells on the site.

📌 What Estée Lauder wants from the court

• Monetary damages (amount not specified)

• Orders blocking Walmart from importing, selling, and advertising the accused goods

• Disclosure of suppliers/manufacturers and accounting of profits related to the sales

🛡️ Walmart’s response: Walmart says it’s aware of the complaint, has “zero tolerance” for counterfeits, and will respond in court when served.

Why it matters 🤨

Marketplace trust is becoming a competitive feature, not just a compliance task. When premium categories like beauty get hit by counterfeit claims, it pressures platforms to prove seller governance and pushes brands to rethink where they’re willing to let demand form. Ultimately, you may need a risk lens for your marketplace, because one counterfeit narrative can change how customers interpret every “sold by” label on your site.

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📣 Albertons signs up for ChatGPT ads.

Albertsons Companies is joining OpenAI’s advertising pilot to test clearly labeled ads inside ChatGPT, starting with Valentine’s-related prompts that routed shoppers into Albertsons’ seasonal deals and fast delivery options.

Here are the deets ⬇️: 

💬 Where the ads show up: Albertsons says its ads can appear in ChatGPT when users enter seasonal intent queries like:

• “best flowers for Valentine’s Day”

• “chocolates and sweets as a gift”

• “how to celebrate Galentine’s”

🏪 Localized banners by market: Ads are designed to reflect a shopper’s local Albertsons Companies banner, including Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco, Shaw’s, ACME, and Tom Thumb, so the offer shown is tied to the store footprint a customer can actually shop.

🧁 What happens after a click: Engaging with the ad sends users to a dedicated destination page with deals, gifts, and recipes. Albertsons highlights delivery in as little as 30 minutes through Flash™.

📺 Retail media strategy underneath: Albertsons frames this pilot as a path for Albertsons Media Collective to extend retail media reach into conversational discovery, and says its catalog/content are being optimized for large language models alongside tools like AskAI and Albertsons AI.

Why it matters 🤷

Retail media is moving beyond owned platforms. Albertsons has joined the ChatGPT ads train to test how to extend its reach into third-party AI environments where consumers are already asking for advice. Customer acquisition and influence may increasingly happen outside your storefront. But adapting to this distributed model of commerce could capture demand earlier and more efficiently.

🛎️ The Ecom Press Insider

Ecom Fact: Companies are expected to increase their use of AI agents by 67% by 2027. Businesses are approaching agent deployment in three main ways: 36% are using prebuilt SaaS agents, 34% are embedding agents within existing enterprise platforms, and 30% are building custom in-house solutions. (Salesforce)

💡 Takeaway: AI agents are no longer a single-tool decision. Businesses are layering them across SaaS tools, core platforms, and internal systems at the same time. This means thinking about orchestration early; how your AI tools interact, share data, and avoid duplication. It’s best to treat your AI as connected systems.

🛠️ Workshop: Build your store with Shopify’s new AI.

If you’ve ever thought building a Shopify store would take weeks… not anymore 👀

In our latest tutorial, we walk through Shopify’s new AI Store Builder and show you how to go from idea to fully functional storefront in minutes. No coding. No design background. Just a short prompt and Shopify does the heavy lifting.

👉 Watch the full step-by-step tutorial to follow along click by click.

Here’s the breakdown 👇:

1️⃣ Access the AI Store Builder: Start from Shopify’s AI builder page, not the standard homepage. Enter a short description of your store and your store name within 100 characters. Keep it focused and clear so the AI generates better structure and positioning.

2️⃣ Generate and Choose Your Theme: Shopify creates three responsive theme options instantly. Preview desktop and mobile layouts before selecting one. Remember, this is your foundation. You can customize colors, fonts, and layout later.

3️⃣ Add and Optimize Your Products: Remove the sample products and add your own. Upload images, set pricing, track margins, manage inventory, and create variants like size or color. Use AI to generate product descriptions and choose the tone that matches your brand.

4️⃣ Customize with AI Sidekick: Use Shopify’s AI assistant to edit your store using natural language. If you want fewer featured products, need to change layout or remove social icons simply ask. It highlights what it changes so you stay in control.

5️⃣ Activate Payments and Domain: Enable Shopify Payments, verify your email, and secure your domain. Once done, your store is live and ready to accept orders. Shopify’s AI gets you to launch fast. From there, it’s about refining for SEO, content, and conversions.

🎥 Watch the full tutorial on YouTube to see the entire build process in action and follow along step by step.

⚡️Worthy Mentions

• Instagram is developing Snapchat rival ‘Instants.’ 

• EU launches investigation into Google's search advertising practices.

• Amazon's Ring ends police tech partnership over controversial Super Bowl ad.

• Shopify beats revenue expectations with 31% Q4 growth to $743M.

• Airbnb says AI now handles third of its US/Canada support.

Wrapping up…

Another week, another reminder that AI isn’t slowing down in ecommerce.

From AI-powered grocery carts to conversational ads inside ChatGPT, retailers are clearly experimenting with where and how buying decisions begin. And Walmart’s lawsuit raises a different but equally important question about trust and platform accountability.

If you enjoyed this issue, share it with someone building or running an ecommerce brand 📬. Subscribe if you haven’t, and we’ll be back next week with more updates that actually matter 🚀.