AI Agents Knock. Retailers Decide How Wide to Open the Door.
By PYMNTS
AI summary of the source article
Retailers are adopting varied approaches to artificial intelligence shopping agents as discovery shifts away from traditional search. While QVC allows agents to complete purchases, Walmart integrates with Google's Gemini before passing transactions to its internal Sparky assistant, and Amazon actively blocks external bots to develop its own solutions. Shopify connects merchant catalogs directly to platforms like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, tripling AI-driven traffic year over year in Q2. Despite emerging agentic channels, PYMNTS Intelligence data shows 59.7% of consumers still finalize their AI-assisted purchases on Amazon, highlighting persistent consumer loyalty toward dominant marketplaces.
Why it matters
The rise of agentic commerce forces merchants to decide whether to cede direct customer touchpoints and checkout data to AI platforms in exchange for discovery traffic.
Key facts
- About 23% of U.S. consumers, or 61 million people, now start shopping research with AI tools.
- Amazon blocks dozens of outside AI agents, including Meta's Muse, while building its own assistant.
- Among consumers reporting an AI-assisted purchase, 59.7% completed the checkout on Amazon.