AI Agents Fall Short on Shopping

Artificial intelligence heavyweights including OpenAI and Perplexity, along with commerce giant Amazon, are painting visions of AI tools acting as personal shoppers that can seamlessly buy stuff across the internet.

But the handful of AI agents that have so far been released have had trouble with online shopping, since they’re easily tripped up by variations in retailers’ product listings and checkouts, investors and founders say. It’s also tough for retailers to distinguish between an agent and a malicious bot, so some merchants are more inclined to block AI tools from checking out rather than make their sites friendlier for AI to navigate.