This holiday season, millions of Americans will open their laptops to shop online, but tech companies are racing to turn the job of online shopping over to AI agents instead. Perplexity, a startup, has recently released an AI shopping agent for its paying customers in the United States, which can navigate retail websites, find products, and even click the checkout button on behalf of users. While Perplexity may be the first major AI startup to offer this service, others like OpenAI and Google are reportedly developing their own AI agents that can make purchases, such as booking flights and hotels.

The development of AI shopping agents has the potential to reshape online shopping, making it more efficient and convenient for users. These tools could save users hours when booking flights, finding deals, or locating hard-to-find products. However, concerns around privacy, security, and retailer pushback are already emerging. For instance, Google's AI agent reportedly needs access to users' credit card information, which could give consumers pause. Meanwhile, Perplexity's shopping agent uses a mix of new and old techniques to get around barriers erected by retailers to block unwanted bots from using their sites.

Perplexity has partnered with Stripe to leverage older payments features that have been repurposed for AI agents. Stripe is allotting single-use debit cards for Perplexity's AI agent to spend money online, making it so the agent can buy products without needing access to users' entire bank accounts. This approach raises some privacy issues, as human checkers are involved to ensure the AI agent is working accurately, but Perplexity declined to comment on whether retailers like Walmart were aware that their products were appearing on its app.

TechCrunch tested out Perplexity's shopping agent by asking it to buy toothpaste. The results were mixed, with the agent taking hours to process purchases and sometimes running into issues where it couldn't purchase items at all. Perplexity's spokesperson said that human oversight was necessary to ensure transactions were completed in a timely manner and to avoid issues like purchasing the wrong product, but the company declined to answer questions around how often human oversight was necessary and how involved humans are in the process.

The rise of AI shopping agents could mean less people visiting online storefronts, where retailers have historically been able to upsell and promote impulse purchases. Advertisers may also not get valuable information about shoppers, which could impact their business. As a result, retailers and advertisers may not let AI agents disrupt their industries without a fight. Companies like Rabbit and Anthropic are training AI agents to use the ordinary user interface of a website, making it harder for website owners to detect and block them.

Rabbit CEO Jesse Lyu said that AI agents are getting better than humans at solving CAPTCHA, the human verification tests that have previously prevented bots from shopping online. This means website owners will need to develop more sophisticated ways to prove personhood online. While Perplexity's shopping agent isn't perfect, it offers an early glimpse of what could be. In the next year, we're likely to see better versions of AI shopping agents from Perplexity, OpenAI, and Google, which could reshape the online retail industry in significant ways.

As the technology continues to evolve, it's essential to address the challenges and concerns that arise. With proper development and implementation, AI shopping agents could revolutionize online retail, making it more efficient, convenient, and personalized for users. However, it's crucial to ensure that these agents are developed with privacy, security, and transparency in mind, and that retailers and advertisers are involved in the process to minimize disruptions to their businesses.