Online shopping often involves endless options and fleeting discounts. A single search for running shoes can yield hundreds of results across multiple platforms, each promising the “best deal.” The holiday season brings excitement, but it also brings a blend of decision fatigue and logistical nightmares.
What if there were a tool capable of hunting for the best prices, navigating endless sales and making sure your purchases arrive on time?
The next evolution in artificial intelligence is AI agents that are capable of autonomous reasoning and multistep problem-solving. AI shopping agents not only suggest what you might like, but they can also act on your behalf. Major retailers and AI companies are developing AI shopping assistants, and the AI company Perplexity released Buy with Pro on Nov. 18, 2024.
Picture this: You prompt AI to find a winter coat under $200 that’s highly rated and will arrive by Sunday. In seconds, it scans websites, compares prices, checks reviews, confirms availability and places the order, all while you go about your day.
Perpelexity’s recently released AI shopping agent can search for items across the web using multiple free-form variables sucgh as color, size, price and shipping time.
Screenshot by Tamilla Triantoro
Unlike traditional recommendation engines, AI agents learn your preferences and handle tasks autonomously. The agents are built with machine learning and natural language processing. They learn from their interactions with the people using them and become smarter and more efficient over time from their collective interactions.
Looking ahead, AI agents are likely to not only master personal shopping needs but also negotiate directly with corporate AI systems. They will not only learn your preferences but will likely be able to book tailored experiences, handle payments across platforms and coordinate schedules.
As a researcher who studies human-AI collaboration, I see how AI agents could make the future of shopping virtually effortless and more personalized than ever.
How AI agents help shoppers
Marketplaces such as Amazon and Walmart have been using AI to automate shopping. Google Lens offers a visual search tool for finding products.
Perplexity’s Buy with Pro is a more powerful AI shopping agent. By providing your shipping and billing information, you can place orders directly on the Perplexity app with free shipping on every order. The shopping assistant is part of the company’s Perplexity Pro service, which has free and paid tiers.
For those looking to build custom AI shopping agents, AutoGPT and AgentGPT are open-source tools for configuring and deploying AI agents.
Consumers today are focused on value, looking for deals and comparing prices across platforms. Having an assistant perform these tasks could be a tremendous time saver. But can AI truly learn your preferences?
A recent study using the GPT-4o model achieved 85% accuracy…
