



How AI is disrupting shopping
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The time of year has come again when gift-givers trudge around shops and scroll endlessly through e-commerce websites to find suitable Christmas presents for their loved ones. Some will enjoy browsing.
But many will not. A growing number will happily outsource much of the process to artificial intelligence (AI). Chatbots offer a personal shopper for all.
They can listen to what a user wants, produce a shortlist of products and help with comparisons. This holiday season around two-thirds of consumers in rich countries, and five-sixths of those aged 18-24, plan to use AI to help them shop, according to a survey by Shopify, a provider of e-commerce tools. A study from McKinsey, a consultancy, found that the second-most-common use for ChatGPT-like “generative" AI in America is for shopping advice, behind general research but ahead of writing assistance (see chart 1).
Increasingly, consumers can even make purchases directly through a chatbot. By 2030 McKinsey reckons that $3trn-5trn of shopping worldwide will be conducted through such “agents". Retail is on the cusp of its next big upheaval.
AI firms are betting that their technology will disrupt shopping just as e-commerce did in the internet age. Although OpenAI has deprioritised efforts to integrate ads into ChatGPT, it has struck deals with Shopify and Etsy, an online marketplace for artisanal wares, to allow merchants to sell their products through its chatbot in return for a fee. Google, whose search engine has long been the starting point for many shoppers, is also eyeing the market for so-called agentic commerce.
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