06-26-2026SUBSCRIBER EXCLUSIVE

Inside AI’s $5 trillion quest to develop taste

If agentic commerce is to fulfill its potential, it has to do more than shop for boring, everyday products. Google, OpenAI, the social media giants, and a raft of startups are racing to win the high-stakes, all-too-human race to make AI that has a sense of style.

The assignment is charming: I’ve been asked to moderate a panel in a garden in early summer. The problem is that it will require an outfit I don’t own and have no time to find. Easy enough, I think. I use AI every day to summarize transcripts, synthesize financial data, and draft emails. Surely I can outsource this.

I open ChatGPT and ask it to find me a dress from my favorite label, Sézane, that’s appropriate for an outdoor professional event. It pulls dresses from the French brand’s catalog that are made of linen and crocheted—floaty, unstructured things that require a level of undergarment coordination I don’t want to think about. I clarify. It pivots.

After several rounds of negotiation, it finally surfaces a red polka-dot dress I like. There are no links. I go to Google, search manually, and discover that the........

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