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During this holiday season, millions of Americans are set to open their laptops for gift shopping. Tech companies are now vying to hand over the online shopping task to AI agents instead. Perplexity recently launched an AI shopping agent for its US customers, navigating retail websites and even completing checkouts. OpenAI and Google are also reportedly developing their own shopping agents.

Tech Companies' Approaches to Overcoming Retail Barriers

Tech companies are using a combination of new and old techniques to bypass retailers' barriers against unwanted bots. Rabbit released its LAM Playground, allowing an AI agent to navigate websites on behalf of users through a data center computer. Anthropic's computer use agent does the same but is hosted on personal computers. Perplexity is partnering with Stripe to utilize repurposed payment features for AI agents, such as single-use debit cards. This ensures agents can make purchases without accessing users' entire bank accounts.

Google's AI Agent and Privacy Concerns

Google's AI agent reportedly requires access to credit card information, which may raise concerns among consumers. However, many companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, and Shopify already have access to billing info and fill out forms during online shopping. This could give them an advantage in the AI shopping space.

Perplexity's Shopping Agent and Its Challenges

Perplexity's shopping agent takes hours to process purchases and sometimes encounters issues where it can't buy items at all. In testing, when asked to buy toothpaste, it showed several options but had issues with actual purchases. For example, the first purchase was rejected as the item was sold out at Walmart. Even after multiple attempts, it took several hours to complete a purchase. There are also privacy concerns as human checkers are involved, but details about their involvement are lacking.

The Potential Impact of AI Shopping Agents

AI shopping agents have the potential to reshape online shopping. Just like AI chatbots help surface hard-to-find information, these agents can find products or deals that users might not otherwise find. They could save users time when booking flights or finding gifts. However, there is a long way to go before they can buy everything on a holiday wishlist. Retailers and advertisers may be reluctant to let AI agents disrupt their industries as they lose the opportunity for upselling and targeted advertising.

The Future of AI Shopping Agents

In the next year, we can expect better versions of AI shopping agents from Perplexity, OpenAI, and Google. This could be just the beginning of how AI agents reshape the online retail industry and the problems they might encounter. As AI agents get better at solving CAPTCHA and using website interfaces like real people, the shopping experience could improve. But for now, there are still challenges to overcome.