Consumers warm up to agentic AI purchases

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Shoppers are trusting AI to buy items on their behalf, but they still prefer a human step in the process, a new survey found.

Though consumers are open to letting AI agents handle some of their purchases, many still would prefer a human touch. Over a third (35%) of survey respondents across generations said they would prefer a human to review transactions before AI agents buy items on their behalf. That proportion grew to 44% for baby boomers, the survey found.

As consumers turn to AI tools to find and purchase products, these tools are shifting shoppers’ hierarchy of trust. While 59% of consumers trust their friends and family’s opinions when making purchasing decisions, 44% of them trust AI tools, the survey found. AI has surpassed other information sources for trustworthiness, such as influencers, newspapers, major media outlets, TikTok and Instagram, according to the survey.

“For more than a decade, e-commerce growth was driven by buying attention on social feeds and optimizing for instant checkouts,” Jaysen Gillespie, vice president of product marketing and analytics at RTB House, said in a statement. “This research proves that era is coming to an end. Consumers are turning to AI as an analytical powerhouse, using it to evaluate and discover brands, conduct price comparisons, and conduct deeper research before they buy.”

But as consumers rely more on AI than other traditional information sources, some AI platforms are trusted more than others. In the U.S., Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT are the top two AI shopping tools, both at 43%, followed by Claude (23%) and Grok (21%), the report noted.

As the agentic AI market is predicted to boom, retailers are investing in their own AI tools.

In a recent second-quarter earnings call with analysts, CEO Andy Jassy said that more than 350 million customers had used agentic AI shopping assistant Alexa for Shopping in the past year. Interactions with the tool skyrocketed fivefold year over year.

By 2030, the U.S. agentic commerce market is projected to reach $1 trillion , according to a report from McKinsey & Company and ICSC. Nearly two-thirds (62%) of survey respondents said they have relied on AI tools to compare prices, brands, models and reviews, and 68% of respondents said they had used at least one AI platform in the past three months to shop.

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Bankruptcy filings have continued in recent months, including from QVC Group and Sleep Number.

In the first half of the year, Etsy sold Depop, Reformation filed for an IPO and Bed Bath & Beyond made a slew of acquisitions.

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