Woolworths strikes a deal to use Google AI in chatbot

Tuesday, 20 January 2026

Supermarket giant Woolworths has signed a deal with Google to use its artificial intelligence to fill up shoppers’ baskets ‒ and an AI expert says it won’t be long before other retailers follow suit, at the risk of losing revenue.

Woolworths will use Google’s Gemini platform for its chatbot, Olive, allowing AI-powered agents to shop on a customer’s behalf and perform other tasks such as budget planning and meal planning.

Currently, Olive is able to answer basic customer queries about online shopping and orders, and provide information about Woolworths stores.

Woolworths is the first Australasian retailer to partner with Google’s agentic platform to enable a personalised shopping experience.

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Agentic AI is the next version of AI that allows systems to independently plan, reason, and take actions with minimal human oversight.

The Olive chatbot, available on Woolworth’s website and app, has been live in New Zealand since 2019.

However, a spokesperson for Woolworths NZ said the agentic version of Olive would not be immediately available in NZ ‒ and there was no firm timeline for its introduction.

Google’s Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience includes a new shopping agent tool, that acts like a personal assistant and can respond to broad prompts.

Woolworths said it would collaborate with Google on the development of the AI tool over coming months to customise the shopping experience, including personalised offers informed by the insights from Olive over the past seven years.

How do you feel about AI doing more of the hard work on your shopping list? Leave a comment below.

The supermarket hoped AI would offer “greater convenience” and “value” to customers.

Woolworths first invested in AI at the beginning of its partnership with Google Cloud in 2017.

Woolworths managing director and chief executive Amanda Bardwell said the company was “evolving its digital shopping assistant into an intuitive partner that won't just answer questions, but actually anticipates your needs”.

“This is a practical innovation that's all about us doing the heavy lifting for you, making shopping that little bit easier to give you time back in your day.”

Justin Flitter, AI educator and founder of New Zealand.AI, called the move to integrate agentic AI into Woolworths’ shopping assistant “an interesting shift”.

He said it would no doubt make the shopping experience more convenient, but would also force competitors and other major players in the sector to move to follow the same.

“The ability for people to go to have a natural language conversation with an AI assistant that can potentially automatically add items into a cart is will reduce the friction of finding the best or right products for what you want to do. It's a time saver, it's an efficiency, and from a discovery standpoint, expands the types of products or the range of products that people might be exposed to.

“I think it will have a material benefit on the way that customers interact with with the brand, and turn the experience round from being click, click, click, to much more of a conversation with it.”

An example of this could be, users would be able to take a photo of three items in their fridge and ask Olive, “I want to make this meal, what other items do I need?”

Flitter said there was huge opportunity for the retail sector to implement consumer-facing AI.

“From research late last year, the demand for consumers and retail staff to have access to AI tools is very high. It is mismatched by the level of adopt integration. Demand is there and implementation is not meeting that demand.”

Tina Trenkner-Meade, founder and commerce consultant of Signal & Light, said companies utilising AI were increasing their revenue streams, but up until now it had been hard to quantify those gains.

“What I would recommend to retailers to consider is; most of your purchases are going to be made in store. [But] if you're going to develop an AI chatbot, how can you use it to augment the omni channel experience? Whether you buy online or you buying in store? How are you going to ensure that you're meeting the needs of your customer when they need you across different surfaces?”

Asked if she thought Kiwi shoppers were ready for this different way of shopping with retailers, Trenkner-Meade said research suggested they were.

“What will be interesting to see is there some sort of event or trend that really brings AI shopping into the mainstream.

“I'm not personally convinced we've seen that moment where it comes into the mainstream, but I definitely think we're seeing customers experiment with it to see how we can make their day to day lives easier.”

Earlier this week Google announced a partnership with Apple, for the iPhone maker to use Google Gemini to power its assistant Siri, paying about US$1 billion a year to utilise Google AI.

Google Cloud vice president of applied AI Darshan Kantak said Gemini’s technology enabled businesses to offer personalised shopping experiences.