South Africa’s biggest retailer, the Shoprite Group, has launched a new “Smart AI” shopping assistant for its Sixty60 platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the group, the assistant, named Pixie, will be personalised for every user and designed to predict what individual customers need and when they need it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The system will pitch recommendations, which will be displayed to users in a new interface where they can swipe to browse the products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Swiping up removes the item, and swiping down adds it to their basket\u2014moving away from previous methods of searching and scrolling catalogues to find regular or relevant products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The retailer said that Pixie also presents customers with personalised offers based on what they actually buy, rather than random deals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It added that future plans will see the assistant becoming more “helpful”, extending beyond recommendations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This could see it automatically reorder household essentials or even plan weekly meals based on a customer’s budget or what’s in their pantry, it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“At its core, Pixie learns from how each customer shops,” the group said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Based on individual purchase habits, restocking patterns and preferences, it surfaces only relevant product recommendations, making it easier to find and reorder the things customers buy regularly.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Pixie is like a little friend, assisting each customer quietly in the background…Shopping used to be something you did. But now, it\u2019s something Pixie handles for you,” it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shoprite noted that Pixie was developed by its in-house R&D segment, ShopriteX, through a team of product designers, data scientists, machine learning engineers and software developers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like the Sixty60 platform itself, Pixie is local technology, developed by a South African team for South African shoppers, it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The group also noted that the personalisation engine behind the AI assistant is its Xtra Savings rewards programme. This means that the assistant will “get smarter with every shop”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, the retailer stressed that the system is built “on a foundation of privacy and trust” and never compromises individual customer data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The group said that the AI assistant will launch in beta with Xtra Savings Plus members first, with the experimental service rolling out to the Sixty60 app from Thursday, 9 April 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Shoprite has launched a new “Smart AI” shopping assistant for its Sixty60 platform, in a limited test.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":856454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[7520,17414],"class_list":["post-856446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-shoprite","tag-sixty60"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=856446"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":856465,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856446\/revisions\/856465"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/856454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}