“Chatbot developers and retail giants are battling over user data as they lay the foundation for a future in which AI agents can do all your online shopping for you.”
It’s strange how we’ve moved from mall shopping to online shopping to now AI shopping for us
The book QualityLand was not an instruction manual.
Humans shopping online allows the seller to offer discounts, upsell services, create serendipity (“How about a lip gloss 50% to go with those shoes?”), and build brand loyalty. Or if you’re a techie, how about 50% off an SD-card with the purchase of a gadget?
This is why retailers create these expensive e-commerce websites instead of just dumping their wares into E-Bay or Amazon. They also do things like web heatmaps and other types of analytics to optimize the UI/UX.
Having an AI agent do the shopping means they lose all that. It’s any wonder they’re going to fight AI shopping agents. Be prepared for a lot more complex captchas when roaming around the web.
Not a chance I would let an AI do my shopping.
My imagination thinks that in an AI shopping future, anyone who reads an article similar to this automatically buys a Micky Mouse plushie.
Did not want to ? That easy to fix: please go to your settings to turn off auto-shopping. Refunds work too, just ship it back
The number of dark patterns wrapped around both disabling auto shop and getting a return are going to make the current cookie nonsense look like a walk in the park.
“By clicking the ok button to activate this (critically important) site, you agree to allow us to make suggestions to the auto AI sales on your behalf”
Oh I know that book. In the end you‘ll be delivered crap automatically because the government decided AI knows what you need better than you do and you‘ll struggle to explain to the AI that you really don‘t want nor can afford that dolphin dildo sitting unopened on your couch table. But the balance was already drawn from your bank account so tough luck.
There’s certainly no conflict of interest there…
It doesn’t help that with google messed up sometimes it feels like searching through ai is the only way to actually find what I want but I’d never let it buy stuff or even put in a cart unsupervised
So I’m curious what people think of this.
There’s consent from the shopper and the retailer, so it’s not unethical, but obviously the model developers are going to enshittify and try to extract as much value as they can.
I ask because just this morning I got an offer to work on exactly this.
There’s consent from the shopper and the retailer, so it’s not unethical
Two parties can enter an willingly agreement that’s ultimately harmful for both. For the shopper it will limit choice and for the retailer, they’re signing their own death warrant.
I’d say it’s the same as giving kids access to your credit card, only they’re not your kids and they’re dumber than you are.
The most successful application for Facebook’s ‘M’ agent in testing was to reach out and make restaurant reservations, book appointments and, crucially, negotiate with Comcast for better rates.
Maybe Ai can be useful in that space.
Right up until the moment that Comcast does a deal with Facebook to get its agent to not help you get a better rate and perhaps instead lock you into a more expensive contract instead. Remember Facebook’s business model is ads.
