Instacart now has its own AI assistant

0:00Hey there, I'm Travis Hoyam, one of the hosts of Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. Each weekday on Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing, we talk through the business news you need to know and the story is moving stocks on Wall Street. On weekends, we play in personal finance strategies and dive into the industry shaping tomorrow and host the experts, authors and executives that understand them. Tune in for insights and a long-term perspective on investing and of course, stock ideas, plenty of them. Quotalistener, it pays to listen. Check us out and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

1:28On a regular basis, some even go so far as insisting that you must do so every day, lest some terrible fake befall you. But is that still the case in 2026? Or is this advice held over from an earlier era of computing? The general consensus is that you do need to restart your PC. How often you do so depends on which operating system you're running and to some extent, whether you're using a laptop or desktop. Windows machines need to be restarted more often than others. And though we won't be focusing on them here, Linux systems typically need fewer restarts in general. Broadly, restarting a Windows PC at least once a week is beneficial. Because of their limited internal space and accordingly restricted cooling setups, a laptop should be shut down or at least put to sleep when you're done using it. Putting a sleeping laptop in a bag is risky since it could get extremely hot if it wakes up in that trapped environment.

2:28There are different reasons to restart your PC and understanding the basics of what happens when you do will help you determine when your system needs a power cycle. So is there any benefit to restarting your PC regularly? Check out the latest for Maximil or find out right now at Engaget.com. Instacart has launched Climontime, its own AI shopping assistance, which it says was designed to tackle the hardest parts of grocery shopping. Deciding what to cook while staying within budget. Climontime, which is now available across North America on the Instacart marketplace, understands natural language like other AI chatbots. You can tell it that you need to make a high protein easy dinner for two and it will respond with a recipe that comes with a list of items you can add to your card with a tap. The company says Climontime's responses will be based on what's currently available in your chosen store locations. So you won't end up considering a recipe that you can't get ingredients for.

3:28If you already have some items in the ingredients list, you can remove them before adding the rest to your card. Climontime can also make suggestions based on the choices you set in its preference center. For example, you can tell it to suggest only not free, vegetarian, or gluten for your recipes to make sure it recommends food your household can actually eat. In addition to helping you decide what's for dinner, you can also use Climontime to quickly shop for your staple items. If you tell it to restock your pantry or to shop your usual, it will take information from your previous orders to present you a list that you can swiftly add to a card and pay for. And if you like Johnning Down Your Gross Relist by hand, you can take a photo and have Climontime turn it into an item list you can add straight to your card. That said, you may want to review the assistant's suggestions checking out. Cicart says orders placed with Climontime typically exceed its $115 average basket size, probably because it's so easy just paying for everything it recommends.

4:29While Climontime is in Cicartone AI chatbod, it's not the only one that works with its system. Over the past few months, the company has teamed up with tech companies to bring gross reinegrations to chatch atbt, Claude, Gemini, or AI mode in Google search. Thanks for listening to the show. Make sure to rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Today's show feature journalism by gadget contributor, Mario LaMoon, and was produced by SpokenLayer. I'm Imran Shaken, we'll talk more tomorrow. SpokenLayer.