Pick n Pay is adding an AI shopping companion called Penny to its asap! app, letting customers build a grocery basket by asking for what they want in their own words — by voice, text or photograph — rather than searching and scrolling through product listings.

The feature, built on Google’s Gemini models, goes live to some users from Monday, 6 July and is expected to reach all asap! users in the coming weeks. Pick n Pay is billing it as South Africa’s first conversational grocery shopping experience.

“On-demand delivery changed how people shop. AI is now changing how they order,” said Enrico Ferigolli, retail executive for omnichannel at Pick n Pay. “We’re moving from search-and-scroll shopping to conversation-led shopping.”

Speaking to TechCentral ahead of the launch, he said: “The next disruption [in e-commerce] is removing the effort from shopping itself.”

In practice, an “Ask” button will appear next to the search bar in the app. Tapping it opens a conversation with Penny, which can take a typed request, a voice note or a photo. Ask it for a carbonara recipe and it returns the method along with a carousel of options for each ingredient — the spaghetti, the pecorino, the bacon — that can be added to the basket.

Customers can also ask it to reorder a previous shop, plan a meal to a budget or suggest substitutions. Ferigolli said the multimodal input is the part he finds most useful, describing how he photographed a handwritten shopping list written in Italian and had Penny correctly interpret and translate it into a basket of local products.

‘In any language’

Penny does not, however, place orders — at least, not yet. It assembles the basket and hands the customer back to the checkout, where they select a delivery slot and decide whether to redeem Smart Shopper points.

“It will not place an order for you at this stage. There are elements related to credit card transactions. We’re not doing that yet,” Ferigolli said, adding that autonomous ordering is something Pick n Pay may pursue later. Nor can external Gemini users shop Pick n Pay through an API or agent, as US shoppers can now do with some retailers through ChatGPT — the experience is confined to the asap! app for now.

Read: Pick n Pay adds clothing to asap! app in ‘super app’ push

The release promises shopping “in any language”, but Ferigolli was more measured in his interview with TechCentral. Penny supports as many languages as Gemini does, he said, but performance varies: South Africa’s African languages, though improving quickly, are “not at the level of other languages”. He suggested it will take an ecosystem of local start-ups to bolt on strong support for specific South African languages on top of the large foundation models.

On the technology, Ferigolli said Gemini does not have direct access to Pick n Pay’s databases. Penny draws on a set of APIs for search, order history and Smart Shopper points, plus the app’s content management system and a retrieval layer of curated content the assistant can reference.

From Bottles to battle: how Pick n Pay is turning to tech in retail fight - Enrico Ferigolli — Pick n Pay’s Enrico Ferigolli

Pick n Pay tested several large language models before settling on Gemini, which he said won on the balance of accuracy, speed and cost. He also flagged that a retail-media layer is coming, allowing manufacturers to bid on search terms within the conversational interface much as they already can elsewhere in the app.

Google South Africa country director Kabelo Makwane said the launch was part of a broader shift from AI that answers questions to AI that helps people get things done, saying the strength of multimodal AI is that customers can speak, type or share a photo and have their intent understood without adapting to the technology.

Rival Checkers Sixty60 launched its own AI assistant, Pixie, in April, though that tool — built in-house by ShopriteX on Xtra Savings data — leans towards predictive replenishment and a swipe-based “Smart Basket” rather than open conversation. Ferigolli described the difference as a deliberate philosophical split: Penny starts with the conversation, Pixie with the reorder and, “over time, both will do both”.

The launch builds on the overhaul of the asap! app in 2025, which re-platformed the front and back end and reported online sales growth of 48.7% for the year to 2 March 2025. Ferigolli said that groundwork lets Pick n Pay ship AI features faster, with more to come over the next three to four months, and that the online push has the backing of CEO Sean Summers and the board.

Pick n Pay is “a little bit behind”, he conceded, “but I think that with the technologies that we’re putting together … we are going to get ahead really, really fast”.