🛍️ Our future with AI is shaping up to be one where agents will be doing the shopping for us. This means bad news for ecommerce as sellers and brands struggle to adapt to AI-generated search results, according to the Financial Times. With Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft already introducing product hunting through AI-powered features, how will consumers and, most importantly, online sellers hold out?

AI makes the call. Now that AI has infiltrated traditional search engines, users are clicking less on websites and instead relying on AI-generated summaries. As a result, cropping up in AI-generated results has become every advertiser’s goal. Startups like Profound, Refine, and Algolia now exist for the purpose of monitoring brand presence in AI chatbots. A platform that does the search for you essentially robs users of the unrestrained experience of primary shopping, limiting a consumer’s choice. As Profound co-founder James Cadwallader puts it, “AI agents steal or hijack that consumer from the brand.”

How can brands reach users now? While AI agents primarily choose the top results from traditional search engines to include in their product recommendations, other mechanisms are taking precedence over traditional search engine optimization (SEO). Google, for instance, leverages advertising, search results, and stored personal data to give customized recommendations. Advertisers are using techniques like creating longer URLs with specific keywords or obtaining a mention on websites that are more likely for AI agents to pick up.

Online marketing is shifting its focus from traditional SEO to accommodate for a rise in “semantic search.” The old ways of searching for specific clothing items are losing momentum as users now shop through AI chatbots with broad search terms like “a wedding in the south of France.” Brands have to account for such associations in their text descriptions in order to turn up on AI’s radar. However, research from the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria suggests that chatbots can also consider advertising on traditional websites, prioritizing simple clear-text advertising over images.

Are we once again compromising our personal data? These AI agents don’t just stop at generating product selections, they can complete orders on a consumer’s behalf. Transactions would take place through chatbots, according to Dept CEO Dimi Albers, and not the actual seller’s platform. As these models interact in a closed loop, users’ personal data could be exploited for easy transactions, which raises concerns over privacy and control.

OpenAI is leading on the AI ecommerce front, having developed Operator, a shopping system that can run ecommerce browsing. The AI titan also has its sights set on collecting shares from product sales made through ChatGPT — with an upcoming integrated checkout feature. Perplexity has its AI search engine Comet that operates on different apps on a user’s desktop, Microsoft has its Action feature that acts as a shopping browser, and Google’s AI mode also generates different product selections.

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