Canadian retail giant Loblaw Companies Limited has launched what it calls a first-of-its-kind grocery shopping experience inside ChatGPT — signalling how conversational AI is rapidly moving from novelty to mainstream commerce.
The company announced the rollout of its PC Express app within ChatGPT, allowing customers to browse groceries, plan meals and build shopping lists through natural conversation. Instead of scrolling through traditional e-commerce pages, shoppers can now ask for menu ideas, refine ingredient lists and select products from their local store — all inside a chat interface.
The move reflects a broader shift in global retail: AI is no longer just powering back-end logistics or recommendation engines, but directly shaping how consumers discover and purchase products.
Beyond customer-facing innovation, Loblaw is also expanding its internal AI capabilities. It will deploy ChatGPT Enterprise across its corporate workforce to boost productivity and innovation. The retailer has already embedded OpenAI models into several proprietary systems, including an AI assistant for store managers and agent-based supply chain tools aimed at improving inventory accuracy and logistics.
For OpenAI, the partnership represents another step in embedding generative AI into everyday commercial activity.
The announcement is significant beyond Canada. As retailers worldwide search for differentiation in a competitive, margin-squeezed market, conversational commerce could become a defining trend of the next retail cycle. By merging search, inspiration and transaction into a single dialogue, AI-powered apps promise to reduce friction and personalise shopping at scale.
With over 2,800 stores and more than 220,000 employees, Loblaw’s adoption of embedded AI tools suggests that large, traditional retailers are no longer cautiously experimenting with generative AI — they are operationalising it.
If successful, this model could influence how supermarkets, pharmacies and mass retailers globally rethink digital engagement — turning chat from a support channel into the storefront itself.
