Overview
- New polling from Braze indicates AI assistants could influence about 8% of UK Christmas gift purchases, with roughly one in eight under‑35s planning to use them and older adults largely skeptical.
- OpenAI has struck commerce deals with Etsy and Shopify to enable sales through ChatGPT, while Google is testing agentic features in the US that check stock, track prices and make some purchases when deals appear.
- Amazon has blocked OpenAI’s crawlers and filed a lawsuit against Perplexity over its Comet agent, as CEO Andy Jassy criticized third‑party shopping bots and the company promotes its own assistant, Rufus, which it says served 250 million customers this year.
- Walmart is enabling purchases through ChatGPT and testing ads in its Sparky assistant; Mizuho estimates referrals account for 4% of Walmart’s site visits, with ChatGPT driving about a third of that traffic, and Accenture research suggests shoppers prefer retailer‑owned bots.
- Experts say chatbots work best for spec‑driven goods but falter in taste‑based categories like fashion, and surveys suggest in‑store experiences may gain value as consumers seek human interaction.