Hungarians order with one sentence: this is how we shop with the help of AI

Since its launch in January, customers have had more than 15,000 conversations with Kifli.hu’s new AI assistant, MAIA, where they actively asked for help from artificial intelligence. In less than three months, the online supermarket’s customers asked MAIA over 50,000 specific questions. The AI ​​interface has been opened more than 160,000 times during this time, indicating that the function has quickly become a natural part of the shopping process. 

The most common request is not for inspiration, but for an immediate solution: 96 percent of questions are related to specific purchase intentions. The most typical instruction is: “Fill my cart with my usual order!” – this was entered by customers more than 2,800 times. 

“Customers don’t want to spend time shopping, they want to save time. AI helps with this: it simplifies decisions and takes the burden off everyday life – whether it’s a quick dinner or putting together a full weekly menu,” said Szilveszter Sasvári, Marketing Manager at Kifli.hu. 

The usage patterns reflect everyday life situations: customers often ask for help with quick dinners, putting together multi-day menus, or special diets – whether it’s gluten-free or plant-based solutions. AI not only recommends premium products, but also helps find the most affordable alternatives, so everyone can tailor their shopping to their own needs and budget.  

The questions include everyday ingredients – fresh baked goods, meats, cheeses – as well as ingredients that customers would use to prepare a more special dish. With a selection of over 15,000 products, Kifli.hu can quickly find everything customers need with just one conversation – from basic items to premium products, from private label alternatives to offerings from local producers. 

The data also shows that the use of AI closely follows the daily rhythm: most questions come between 10:00 and 14:00 and 16:00 and 21:00, and the most active days are from Thursday to Saturday. In more than a third of the conversations, the assistant also displays specific products, so it not only answers, but also actively helps with the decision and the creation of the basket. 

However, users do not just ask questions, they also chat with MAIA. In addition to practical questions, according to the data, sentences were also “spoken” that refer to “what kind of AI” answers them, but some people test the system with funny or unusual questions: others simply give feedback. For example, “Are you ChatGPT?”, “Generate funny swear words!” were spoken. and “I didn’t think you knew that either.” 

AI is effective not only in shopping, but also in customer service: it handles 95% of questions independently, providing quick and accurate answers, only the rest required the intervention of a human agent.