Fact-based journalism that sparks the Canadian conversation

Articles Business Environment Health Politics Arts & Culture Society

Special Series Hope You’re Well For the Love of the Game Living Rooms In Other Worlds: A Space Exploration Terra Cognita More special series >

For the Love of the Game

In Other Worlds: A Space Exploration

More special series >

Events The Walrus Talks The Walrus Video Room The Walrus Leadership Roundtables The Walrus Leadership Forums Article Club

The Walrus Video Room

The Walrus Leadership Roundtables

The Walrus Leadership Forums

Subscribe Renew your subscription Change your address Magazine Issues Newsletters Podcasts

Renew your subscription

The Walrus Lab Hire The Walrus Lab Amazon First Novel Award

Amazon First Novel Award

Your AI Shopping Assistant Is Selling You Out

The bots promise to get the best deals. Studies say they mostly find pricier, sponsored options

In The Truman Show, Laura Linney is Truman’s upbeat wife—Meryl—and a sales channel at the very same time. In one moment, she is comforting him; the next, she is swivelling back toward the camera with a fresh box of Mococoa with “all-natural cocoa beans from the upper slopes of Mount Nicaragua.” She’s performing marital intimacy while chasing a product-placement bonus. It’s as gross as it is captivating.

That character was an arresting caricature in the 1998 film. Today, she is an obvious ancestor to two-faced AI agents. When you deputize an AI agent to shop for you, you basically tell the computer program (or “agent”) what you want. Like: find the best running shoes under $150 for someone with wide feet, or the cheapest flight to Venice. The agent then searches multiple retailers, evaluates options based on your preferences, and completes the sale.

In other words, the online shopping experience we’re used to—searching, comparing, clicking around, reading reviews, abandoning carts, returning later, and finally checking out—is being compressed into a short exchange with a chatbot. That convenience could be transformative. A genuinely loyal AI shopping agent could slash costs and force retailers into fiercer competition. But only if the system is actually working for us rather than quietly working on us.

Companies are trying hard to get us interested. Amazon introduced its Rufus shopping chatbot back in 2024 and has now shifted efforts exclusively to Alexa. Other tools include ChatGPT’s “Instant Checkout” (which started with Etsy) and Perplexity’s........

© The Walrus