South Africa’s grocery retailers are taking their fight for online shoppers into a new area: artificial intelligence.

Checkers Sixty60 has expanded its AI-powered Pixie assistant with a conversational chat feature, allowing customers to build grocery baskets using text, voice notes or photos. The move puts Shoprite’s on-demand grocery platform in a closer contest with Pick n Pay asap!, which introduced its own AI assistant, Penny, in July.

For shoppers, the change is simple. Instead of searching through hundreds of products, they can tell Pixie what they need and receive suggestions based on their shopping habits, the time of day and other context.

The shift shows how South Africa’s biggest grocery retailers are using AI to make online shopping easier, while also trying to keep customers coming back to their apps.

Pixie turns grocery shopping into a conversation

Pixie can suggest meals, build baskets from recipes and take account of preferences such as budget or protein choices. It can also tell the difference between fresh ingredients and pantry staples, so shoppers are not asked to add items such as butter or pepper every time they cook.

The assistant is personalized to each customer’s shopping history. Shoprite said Pixie has already helped shoppers add more than 4 million products to Sixty60 baskets since its April launch, while 98% of Xtra Savings Plus members had used the feature within three months.

Pick n Pay raises the stakes

Pick n Pay’s Penny offers a similar experience through asap!, using Google’s Gemini technology.

Customers can use text, voice or photographs to create baskets, plan meals and find products without relying only on the app’s search function.

The competition is likely to intensify as retailers look beyond delivery speed and prices. AI could give them another way to make their apps more useful while learning more about what customers buy and when they shop.

Shoprite builds on Sixty60’s lead

Shoprite developed Pixie through ShopriteX, its technology and innovation unit.

The group says Sixty60 is South Africa’s No. 1 grocery delivery app and reported first-half 2026 sales of R11.9 billion($737.61 million), up 34.8% from a year earlier.

Shoprite is Africa’s largest food retailer, with more than 3,500 stores across 56 countries. Its brands include Shoprite, Checkers, Checkers Hyper, Usave and Sixty60, giving the group a large retail network from which to expand its digital services.

For customers, however, the real test will be whether these AI tools save time and get the shopping right. As Pixie and Penny improve, the battle for South Africa’s online grocery market may increasingly be fought inside the chat window.