2024 is set to go down in history as the year of the AI assistant. Amid all the ongoing furor around new artificial intelligence applications, when it comes to actual utility for both brands and consumers, the cream that has risen to the top appears to be AI-powered agents.
Pick a retailer and they likely already have an AI shopping assistant, or are working on one. That list already includes Walmart, Amazon, Target, Victoria’s Secret, Ikea and Instacart. And Amazon’s cloud-division, Amazon Web Services, which has long offered technology it has built in-house for use by other companies, just released a white-label AI shopping assistant for retailers and other businesses.
But perhaps even more interesting than retailers’ usage of advanced AI is how non-retailers are leveraging this technology to place themselves squarely at the center of commerce: the AI search engine Perplexity’s Shop Like a Pro tool is the most obvious example, but Google, Apple, FedEx and Yahoo Mail also are getting in on the action, among many others.
This is more than just some gimmicky new tech. If AI agents take off in the way that many industry insiders and analysts predict they will, it could lead to seismic changes in the way people shop.
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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called AI agents “the next giant breakthrough” in a recent Reddit ask-me-anything session. That’s because “these autonomous systems build a unique private knowledge base within consumer devices that can adapt to individual needs and enhance productivity without requiring any technical expertise to operate,” explained Yang Yuanqing, CEO of Lenovo Group in an interview with Observer.
2024 Holiday Season has Proven AI Shopping Agents’ Utility
This “agentic” revolution will impact any number of industries, from personal computing to finance, but some of the most immediate results already are on display in retail — prompting Jason Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis Groupe to declare that “we’re on the brink of a commerce revolution.”
“AI shopping assistants are ushering in a new era of commerce,” Goldberg said on LinkedIn. “AI agents don’t just suggest products — they personalize recommendations, streamline decision-making and handle routine tasks like grocery replenishment. This shift could eliminate the gap between research and purchase entirely, creating a more intuitive consumer journey.”
And this holiday season has shone a spotlight on these AI-powered tools, proving consumers’ eagerness to use them. Salesforce reported that AI and AI agents drove $14.1 billion in online sales globally on Black Friday this year, with the usage of AI-enabled online chat services growing 31% year over year. Additionally, traffic to retail sites from chatbots on Black Friday increased by 1,800% compared to Black Friday last year, according to Adobe Analytics.
Enter the ‘Agentic Era’
The swift proliferation of AI agents across a number of verticals (in addition to shopping) has led to the coining of a new term — the “Agentic Era,” that is, the ongoing shift in AI development from making “bigger” models into building assistants for specific purposes.
Likely most consumers’ first encounter with this was Google’s somewhat bumpy rollout of its AI Overview results experience, which, instead of presenting users with a list of links, summarizes content in the form of an AI-generated answer. The kinks appear to getting worked out and consumers seem to be getting used to the new interface, to the point that this holiday season, Google touted the new search functionality as a quick and easy way to get better gift ideas on the same platform where many people already start their online shopping.
Outside of Google, the AI shopping agent that’s been getting the most buzz this holiday season has been Perplexity’s Shop Like a Pro tool, available only to its Pro subscribers.
We don’t have a Perplexity account but lucky for us one of our favorite tech gurus, M7 Innovations Founder Matt Maher, tested it out and shared all the details: “In real time it is [pulling from] all these different sources and websites and amalgamating them together to get me to the [product] recommendation,” said Maher in a demo on LinkedIn where he used Perplexity to find the perfect set of headphones. “This is every part of the marketing funnel being used. It’s showing me all the different features and I don’t even need to link out to these [websites] because it creates these shopping modules that I can click into. Not only does it have the TL;DR on the actual product, it amalgamates the different feature sets based on those sources, so I get a full sense of what these headphones are going to be like. I can shop, I can compare and I’m never actually leaving Perplexity to go to a website.”
Perplexity’s most recent upgrade to the tool even lets users complete their purchase within the platform without having to link out to a retailers’ website. (Maher bought his headphones from Best Buy without leaving the Perplexity platform.) And the company has launched a new program aimed at getting more merchants integrated into its shopping platform for free so they can be there when customers search, much like Google has done.
In a recent article for Forbes, Goldberg said that Perplexity’s Shop Like a Pro “may be the tipping point for a new era — AI Agent Commerce.”
“Much like the iPhone wove the internet into the fabric of everyday life, AI shopping assistants are poised to embed artificial intelligence into the heart of our shopping experiences, forever changing the retail landscape,” Goldberg said. “As industry giants like Amazon, Google, Apple, OpenAI and Perplexity pour resources into this burgeoning space, these companies envision a future where the friction of shopping — endless comparisons, scrolling and decision-making — is replaced by seamless, personalized assistance.”
Shoppers have been testing this kind of AI-assisted shopping for some time now through voice assistants like Amazon Alexa and Apple’s Siri (which now has ChatGPT integrated). And other tech giants like Salesforce and Microsoft also are busy building their own assistive agents for a wide range of tasks, so the idea that these kinds of interfaces could eventually serve as the entry point for ecommerce isn’t crazy.
AI Assistants Merge Discovery and Purchase into a Single Experience
The opportunity for the tech giants, even in the narrow sliver of agentic applications that is retail, is huge — a successful shopping tool will put them at the center of commerce, thereby making them an essential part of consumers’ everyday lives.
“These advancements aren’t just incremental improvements; they signal a deeper transformation in how consumers engage with commerce,” said Goldberg in Forbes. “Historically, shopping often began with a Google search and was followed by painstaking research across multiple platforms. AI shopping assistants aim to bypass this process entirely, merging product discovery and purchase into a single, intuitive experience. In the near future, you might assign an AI assistant like Siri to manage your grocery shopping. Armed with data from your Instacart history, your calendar and your family’s preferences, it could ensure you’re never out of ingredients for school lunches, responding to a simple command: ‘Hey Siri, keep my pantry stocked.’” Talk about removing friction.
And chatbots aren’t the only way companies that don’t sell products are working to finagle their way into the consumption cycle. Google also recently released a number of updates to Maps and its Lens visual search tool that deeply integrate both of those applications into the in-person shopping experience, not to mention an ongoing slate of upgrades to its online shopping experience.
Yahoo Mail just rolled out a number of updates in its mobile app aimed at making it easier for users to track their purchases as well as stay on top of promotions and offers from their favorite brands, all from their email. (BTW, Gmail also will help you track your packages.) And FedEx added a Wishlist feature to its consumer-facing shopping app, ShopRunner, that lets users create product collections across websites as well as get alerts when products go on sale.
AI Agent ‘Gatekeepers’ Could Dramatically Shift Marketing Strategies
So what does all of this mean for retail? First, retailers need to stay on top of which of these platforms are gaining traction with their customers, because in many cases it could mean that shoppers are encountering — and even buying — their brand without ever touching one of their owned or operated channels.
Second, the larger shift in shopping behaviors that the usage of these platforms may foreshadow could have a huge impact on how and where brands should be focusing their marketing efforts: “Today, brands spend billions on search ads and retail media to capture shopper intent at the point of purchase, [but] what happens when AI assistants eliminate that step altogether?” Goldberg asked. “If a consumer asks an AI to reorder peanut butter, where does the brand place its ad?”
Goldberg’s answer is that brands should “focus on top-of-funnel brand-building — emphasizing emotional connections and trust — rather than relying on lower-funnel tactics like keyword targeting. First impressions, whether through social media, influencer campaigns or traditional ads, will carry even greater weight in an AI-driven ecosystem. With AI agents acting as gatekeepers, the fight for consumer loyalty may be won long before the moment of purchase.”
Of course, if advertising comes to these platforms, that will provide a tried-and-true way to meet consumers where they are. OpenAI is reportedly weighing the idea of adding ads to ChatGPT, and Google has begun to incorporate advertising into AI Overview results pages.
Bottom line, keep a close watch on this space even after the holiday rush has died down — this could be the beginning of whole new way of shopping, and brands won’t want to risk being left behind.
