Samsung seeks to revolutionize how consumers shop for groceries with AI
Samsung Electronics hopes to revolutionize how consumers choose their foods at the grocery store and through other channels, and it’s turning to AI to do it.
Samsung’s new features and updates for its Samsung Food app create a personalized AI-powered food and recipe platform the company hopes will become an essential tool for meal planning a cooking.
The platform’s most popular features include Recipe functions, Shopping List and Meal Planner.
“As people look to get more out of their food — with help from their appliances — we’re thrilled to be upgrading Samsung Food with different types of powerful new functionality,” said Moohyung Lee, executive vice president and head of customer experience, Digital Appliances Business, at Samsung. “Moving forward, with a key focus on user experiences, we will continually enhance the platform with AI and other technologies to support the preparation of meals that are easier, simpler and healthier.”
Samsung Food is a holistic food platform available on various Samsung devices, including and beyond home appliances. Samsung Food+, the premium subscription service of Samsung Food, elevates the experience by integrating a health profile and goals, providing personalized meal plans with recipe recommendations, according to the company.
And now, AI is being added to the year-old app to bring differentiated functionality to users around the globe.
That includes new Vision AI technology, which allows users to add items to their Food List by simply snapping a photo of their food items with a smartphone.
This functionality means that users owning bespoke refrigerators with a Family Hub screen without AI Vision Inside — the internal camera that recognizes food items that goes in and out of the fridge — can now also easily add items with photos to their Food List.
Other benefits of the Samsung Food+ subscription service include automatically adding purchased ingredients to the Food List when users check out at the store or online and searching for recipes based on the contents of the Food List. Users can also get alerts to help them use the items before the manually set use-by-date, helping reduce food waste.
Sustainability solution
Samsung Food+ further provides the meal plans based on users’ Food List to support sustainable food practice goals by personalizing each plan based on the ingredients in users’ Food Lists, prioritizing those nearing use-by-date.
And with the new “Search with Your Food List” feature, recipes using the ingredients listed in their Food Lists will show on top of the search results to help users with ideas on what can be made with what they have. Recipe recommendations are also provided based on the Food List. And whatever has been used from the Food List is recommended to add on the Shopping List.
“This intelligent approach helps inventory maintenance and reduces food waste while ensuring fresh, tasty meals,” according to Samsung.
Samsung Food now features enhanced tools designed to support users to better maintain their health and to reach wellness goals. The platform provides nutrition-focused meal plans that track and monitor caloric intake within daily meal schedules, whether for recipes or individual food items.
It offers “Tailored for You” plans, delivering weekly recipe and snack recommendations based on users’ nutritional needs,6 chosen diets and previous recipe preferences. The system tracks macronutrient intake within daily meal plans and allows customizable calorie and macronutrient targets for individual health objectives.
While Samsung Food users receive three days of recommendations per week, paid and subscribed Samsung Food+ users benefit from a full week of recommendations, with the intelligent platform also factoring in the manually set use-by-dates of ingredients.
This article is an excerpt from the October 2024 issue of Supermarket Perimeter. You can read the entire AI Technology feature and more in the digital edition here.