Perplexity said it "received an aggressive legal threat from Amazon" demanding it prohibits its Comet browser users from using AI assistants on Amazon. Get used to similar kerfuffle.
Agentic AI is going to uproot a lot of well-established models. Commerce will likely be one of the larger categories disrupted. In Perplexity's blog, the company accused Amazon of being a bully, but the reality is we're in uncharted territory. Is an AI assistant the same as a human shopper (probably not)? Should an AI agent be valued like a human relationship (probably not)? Will AI agents mean an overall decrease in impulse buys? And can AI agents step in the middle of the customer relationship in commerce (probably)?
All of these questions will have to be answered along with business arrangements on the back end.
You can read Perplexity's somewhat overwrought post yourself, but the big picture is this:
- Perplexity says AI agents represent the user like a human assistant would.
- "Your AI assistant must be indistinguishable from you,"
- Agentic AI could empower users but could also be a tool to shape commerce traffic (ads too for that matter).
- The real beef is over who will have the power.
During Shopify's third quarter earnings call, President Harley Finkelstein riffed on AI agents and commerce.
"Put simply, AI is able to fundamentally change how we shop, moving from search to conversation, helping all consumers purchase more efficiently. And that's why we built the Commerce for Agents tools that we introduced on our last call, Catalog, Universal Cart and Checkout Kit. These tools make it easier for agents to shop across merchant stores on a buyer's behalf.
But here's the thing. Agentic commerce is so much more than just the last click. Think about it in 3 layers: product discovery, purchasing experience and the post-purchase journey. Now if you're only looking at the payment or checkout layer, you're missing the bigger picture of what we're building: a seamless and intuitive shopping experience end to end."
Finkelstein noted that Shopify is well positioned because it has the data behind the commerce transaction. It has structured data across billions of products and can surface relevant items in second. As shopping becomes more conversational, it's more personalized. Shopify has teamed up with OpenAI's ChatGPT as well as Perplexity.
Finkelstein said:
"Once a shopper finds what they want, Universal Cart and Checkout Kit make add to cart and checkout seamless inside the conversation. ChatGPT, along with Microsoft Copilot have already partnered with us here to make in-chat shopping flows possible.
And finally, post purchase. We're investing in tools that help agents keep customers engaged and informed, order status, return, support, reorder prompts, so the experience stays smooth and merchants build durable relationships with their customers. Of course, different permutations will emerge as agentic commerce evolves, and we are preparing our merchants to be well positioned for whatever path wins."
Commerce is a huge category and the battles are just beginning. What remains to be seen is who owns the keys to the data as well as the funnel.
