AI does my groceries for me.

AI For You | Kay Malcolm, VP @ Oracle | LinkedIn Top Voice | LinkedIn Learning Instructor

How many recipes have you saved this month that you fully intended to make and never did?

I have a graveyard of them. Cute videos I double-tapped, swore I’d cook, and then forgot the second I had to turn “looks delicious” into a real list of stuff to buy. That translation step is the boring part, and it is the part that kills the whole plan every time. Here is the fix in one sentence: you screenshot the two recipes you want this week, hand the images to a free AI like ChatGPT or Claude, and ask it to merge them into one grocery list with the duplicates combined and everything grouped by store aisle.

The first time I did this it took about ten seconds and caught a head of garlic I had already double-bought. No notes app, no scribbled list, no standing in aisle 7 trying to remember what the second recipe needed. This used to be my whole Sunday, and now it is a thing I do while the coffee brews.

Read to the end and you will get a card with the whole method on one screen, made to save to your phone and pull up in the store.

How do I get AI to make my grocery list?

Screenshot the two recipes you want, drop both images into a free AI like ChatGPT or Claude, and ask it to combine them into one grocery list with the duplicates merged and everything grouped by store aisle. You get one sorted list back in about ten seconds, ready to shop. Here is the whole thing, step by step.

Move 01: Screenshot the two recipes you really want | 30 seconds

Pick two dinners you genuinely want to eat this week and screenshot both. It does not matter where they live. A TikTok, a saved Instagram reel, a food blog, even a photo of a page in a cookbook. The whole method works off pictures, so you never have to retype a single ingredient.

WORK BESTIE TIP: Two is the sweet spot for a weeknight. Start there before you try to plan a whole month, or you will talk yourself out of it.

Move 02: Drop them into your AI and paste one line | 30 seconds

Open ChatGPT or Claude. Both are free, and either one works. Drop both screenshots into a single chat, then paste this exact line under them:

Combine these two recipes into one grocery list. Merge duplicate ingredients and organize by store aisle.

That is the whole prompt. You are not writing anything clever. You are handing it two pictures and telling it to do the tedious sorting you never want to do.

WORK BESTIE TIP: Put both screenshots in the same message as the prompt, not in separate chats. It needs to see both recipes at once to catch the overlaps.

Move 03: Get back one clean list with the duplicates gone | 10 seconds

Ten seconds later you get a single list, grouped by aisle, with the repeats already merged. If both recipes call for garlic, it shows up once. If one wants a cup of parmesan and the other wants a half cup, it adds them up for you. This is the part that used to be twenty minutes of my life, done before I finished reading the reply.

WORK BESTIE TIP: Read it once and add your staples out loud. “Add coffee, paper towels, and the kids’ lunch stuff.” It updates the list in place, so your whole run is in one spot.

Move 04: Send it straight to the cart | 1 minute

If you shop online, tell Instacart’s Cart Assistant to build the cart from your list and it loads everything for you to check and pay. If you shop in person, screenshot the aisle-by-aisle list and walk the store top to bottom with nothing forgotten. Either way, the thinking is done.

WORK BESTIE TIP: Save the list to your phone before you leave the chat. If a store is out of something, you can ask the same AI “what can I swap for this” right there in the aisle.

The whole method, in four steps:

• Screenshot two recipes you want to cook this week.
• Drop both images into one chat in ChatGPT or Claude, both free.
• Paste: “Combine these two recipes into one grocery list. Merge duplicate ingredients and organize by store aisle.”
• Send the sorted list to Instacart, or screenshot it for the store.

This week, pick two recipes you have been meaning to make and run the prompt before you talk yourself out of it. Then hit reply and tell me the funniest duplicate it caught in your list.

This is tip 1 in a running series of small things your AI can do for your real life, not for work. More are on the way.

VP @ Oracle | LinkedIn Top Voice | LinkedIn Learning Instructor | Views are my own

AI For You is a weekly newsletter for corporate women (guys you can read it too, relax fellas and let us girls support each other) navigating careers and lives in the AI era. Real tools. Real prompts. No tech background required. - kaymalcolm.com