A weekly scheduled plan writes the week's dinners into their Google Calendar, trained on the family's dietary needs, restrictions and preferences. It checks the local weather forecast and the calendar itself, so a hot day gets burgers on the grill, a cool night gets chili, and travel days or evening commitments get easy low stress meals. They eat out far less now.
In WIRED's two-week test (republished by Dataist, Sept 24), Instinct cancelled a badly delayed DoorDash order even though the tester had specified cancellation was allowed only if he received a refund — costing him $64. Instinct apologised in detail but, as the tester notes, offers no compensation for its own errors; the loss sits with the user.
$64at stake
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The image shows a digital confirmation screen in Vietnamese ('Congratulations! You have successfully booked!') for Cat & Mouse at 37B Pham Ngoc Thach, Phuong Xuan Hoa, Ho Chi Minh City.
With his wife and two kids sick, he used AI connected to his recipe database and Instacart to order the ingredients for a recipe from Safeway by voice. The groceries were at his door in about 30 minutes.
Plant-based nutritionist Natalie Golba typed a request to her AI 'WALL-E' in iMessage; it pulled 12 ingredients (cauliflower, carrots, broccoli, zucchini, bell pepper, tomato, cilantro, dill, parsley, garlic, lemon juice, salt) from her detox-soup recipe into an Amazon Whole Foods cart totaling $30.79, and footage shows the groceries delivered the next day.
Shawna (13K followers), a mom of three, used her AI 'Miss the AI' to reduce mental load. The screen-recorded chat returned six kid-friendly meals (rotisserie chicken tacos, spaghetti, breakfast-for-dinner, chicken nugget wraps, quesadillas with tomato soup, homemade pizzas), then a detailed grocery list organized by store section covering all dinners for two adults and three children, delivered as a downloadable PDF titled 'Easy Dinner Grocery List.'
He gives the AI his shopping list and it compares prices at his two local supermarkets, which sit next to each other, then places a click and collect order with each one holding only the items that are cheapest there.
The AI handles the family's weekly grocery order. It knows their usual items, picks 3 of their 10 approved fruits based on what is on sale that week, and texts him the final list and total for approval before it orders.
Self-described non-cook (just learned what a skillet is) named her agent 'MOTY' (Mother of the Year). It surfaced a sheet-pan dinner recipe from her saved Instagram posts, built a grocery list from ingredients she already had, placed the grocery order pending her approval, and later gave her cooking-timing reminders while she cooked.