Instacart now has its own AI assistant

Imran Shaikh (0:00)

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Imran Shaikh (1:56)

Instacart now has its own AI assistant. More on that coming up, but first. Planning a great trip can be a lot of fun, especially if you're the kind of person who really likes to know all the details. But it can also get exhausting pretty quickly. It usually involves diving into blogs, Reddit posts, or YouTube vlogs. Not to mention all the long reviews you need to check on Google Maps. The result is probably a bunch of tabs in your browser. You can really waste a lot of time doing all of that. Well, that's how it used to be before AI. Tools like Gemini can make planning your next trip much easier. It'll probably make you never want to plan a trip the old-fashioned way again. Head to engadget.com and let Engadget's Felipe Esposito guide you on how to take full advantage of Gemini when planning your next trip.

And it's common wisdom among PC users to restart your computer on a regular basis. Some even go so far as insisting that you must do so every day, lest some terrible fate befall you. But is that still the case in 2026?

Or is this advice held over from an earlier era of computing? The general consensus is that you do need to restart your PC. How often you do so depends on which operating system you're running, and to some extent, whether you're using a laptop or desktop. Windows machines need to be restarted more often than others. And though we won't be focusing on them here, Linux systems typically need fewer restarts in general. Broadly, restarting a Windows PC at least once a week is beneficial. Because of their limited internal space and accordingly restricted cooling setups, a laptop should be shut down, or at least put to sleep, when you're done using it. Putting a sleeping laptop in a bag is risky, since it could get extremely hot if it wakes up in that trapped environment. There are different reasons to restart your PC, and understanding the basics of what happens when you do will help you determine when your system needs a power cycle. So, is there any benefit to restarting your PC regularly? Check out the latest from Max Miller and find out right now at engadget.com.

Instacart has launched Clementine, its own AI shopping assistant, which it says was designed to tackle the hardest parts of grocery shopping. Deciding what to cook while staying within budget. Clementine, which is now available across North America on the Instacart Marketplace, understands natural language like other AI chatbots. You can tell it that you need to make a high protein easy dinner for two, and it will respond with a recipe that comes with a list of items you can add to your cart with a tap. The company says Clementine's responses will be based on what's currently available in your chosen store location, so you won't end up considering a recipe that you can't get ingredients for. If you already have some items in the ingredients list, you can remove them before adding the rest to your cart. Clementine can also make suggestions based on the choices you set in its preference center. For example, you can tell it to suggest only nut-free, vegetarian, or gluten-free recipes to make sure it recommends food your household can actually eat. In addition to helping you decide what's for dinner, you can also use Clementine to quickly shop for your staple items. If you tell it to restock your pantry or to shop your usuals, it will take information from your previous orders to present you a list that you can swiftly add to a cart and pay for. And if you like jotting down your grocery list by hand, you can take a photo and have Clementine turn it into an item list you can add straight to your cart. That said, you may want to review the assistance suggestions checking out. Instacart says orders placed with Clementine typically exceed its $115 average basket size, probably because it's so easy just paying for everything it recommends. While Clementine is Instacart's own AI chatbot, it's not the only one that works with its system. Over the past few months, the company has teamed up with tech companies to bring grocery integrations to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or AI mode in Google search.