Remember when Alexa was going to do all our shopping? Mostly it set kitchen timers.

Now AI assistants can search your catalog, fill a cart and pay.

Agents got their own checkout lane at Shopify. Shop MCP lets any compatible agent search 1B+ Catalog products, build carts and complete Shop Pay checkout.

Those orders land in your Shopify admin like any other. The agent only knows what your catalog tells it, though: price, stock, and product details

Still, a big shift in online commerce. And if you need another sign that it’s moving quick…

Card networks want proof, too. Amex’s new framework records the merchant, budget and product preferences, then locks them into a Proof of Intent Token.

For example, if you ask for white Nikes in size 9, Amex can block an agent that tries buying Adidas. That means that fuzzy specs make your match harder to prove.

Budget and deals do the filtering on AI search surfaces too:

• ChatGPT is testing a shopping box where users pick a product type and budget, then hit “Find” to refine the query.
• Google’s AI Mode Shopping ads now show offers like “Buy 4 get $20 off”, with a details popup, the same as on the regular results page.

Even pharma got a seat. Google is testing branded prescription drug ads in AI Mode and AI Overviews, US only.

Few categories come with more ad rules than pharma, so Google clearly sees AI Mode as a real ad channel.

Whoever ends up doing the buying, your product data is the first thing they read.