Imagine an AI that can shop for you because it knows what products you like and what prices fit your budget.
You can tell it what to do, like, “Find me a durable carry-on under $200 that fits into overhead bins,” and it finds the best options, checks reviews, and even completes the checkout process.
It might sound futuristic, but this kind of “agentic commerce” is closer than most brands realize. Much like the AI that has transformed search and personalization over the past couple of years, autonomous shopping agents are starting to reshape how people discover and buy online.
Salsify surveyed more than 2,700 shoppers across the U.S., U.K., and Canada to understand how ready people are for a world where AI handles the shopping list, as revealed in the upcoming “2026 Consumer Research” report. Check out some of the top insights below.
AI shopping agents are autonomous digital assistants that can act on your behalf to research, compare, and buy products based on your specific preferences and budget. This idea falls under agentic commerce, an emerging era where consumers delegate key parts of the buying journey to intelligent, non-human systems.
Instead of manually browsing hundreds of listings, an AI agent can handle product discovery, evaluate reviews and specs, check availability, and even finalize the order once it finds the right fit.
We’re already seeing early hints of this shift to agentic commerce in action. For example:
But the real excitement is in the next step. The level up from this is fully autonomous agentic ecosystems where AI can manage the entire funnel.
So, why now? A few key trends have collided to make agentic commerce possible:
The results of Salsify’s survey paint a fascinating picture of curiosity toward AI, but also a healthy dose of caution (understandably). Respondents might fall into one of three categories: An interested, regular user, a somewhat interested user, or an unlikely user.
More than 20% of shoppers say they’d use this kind of technology regularly. These are the early adopters and the people who already use digital assistants. They already trust tech and are ready for an AI-powered shopping sidekick that makes life easier.
The largest group of respondents (41%) says they’re “somewhat interested.” These shoppers are open to the idea, but with caveats. They might try AI agents for certain types of purchases (routine items like groceries, pet supplies, or household products), while sticking to hands-on, human-driven research for higher-stakes buys (like electronics or fashion).
The remaining 37% of shoppers say they’re unlikely to try AI shopping agents. For this group, shopping is obviously a more personal activity. They might enjoy comparing options, or simply don’t trust automation enough to hand over complete control.
This varies by generation, too. The survey revealed that the majority of Gen Zers (75%), millennials (75%), and Gen Xers (60%) had some level of interest in the technology, while most baby boomers (62%) are not interested.
Digging deeper into why people feel the way they do, two clear themes emerged:
Interestingly, despite lack of trust being the top reason for consumers not being interested across every generation, millennials' top reason for being interested was that they think these tools know more than they do and are impartial.
AI-driven purchasing might feel like a pie-in-the-sky distant possibility right now, but the numbers show that many consumers are willing to give it a go. So, yes, it might be a few years away from the mainstream, but that doesn’t mean you can’t start laying the groundwork now.
Here’s what you can do to get ready.
AI agents can’t recommend what they don’t understand. They rely on structured, accurate, and rich product data to identify the right match for a shopper’s query. If your catalog is incomplete or inconsistent (missing specs, unclear descriptions, low-quality images, etc.), your products might never show up in an agentic search.
Now’s the time to focus on product data enrichment:
One of the biggest hurdles that agentic commerce faces is consumer trust (trust in the AI and trust in the brands that feed it information). Consumers want to know exactly how AI makes decisions, where their data goes, and why certain products are being recommended.
To tackle this, communicate all of this openly.
This means being upfront about how recommendations are generated, clearly disclosing how customer data is used (and protected), and giving consumers complete control. That might look like letting them override or opt out of automated decisions.
Agentic commerce will ultimately rely on a web of connected platforms, including AI assistants, marketplaces, and comparison tools. That’s a lot of data touching a lot of places at once. So, to make sure it all stays consistent, you need your product data to flow as smoothly as possible across them all.
That means optimizing your feeds and catalogs for machine readability and compatibility.
With anything new like this, it’s always a good idea to start testing early so you’re not scrambling to catch up when the tech really takes off. You could try partnering with early agentic commerce platforms, test AI-powered product discovery tools, or start building your own smart shopping assistant if you have the time and resources.
It’s worth planning and running a few pilot projects to see what works and what doesn’t. That could look something like this:
As much as shoppers love convenience, they still want to feel something when they buy from a brand. Even in an AI-driven world, emotion, community, and storytelling are what create loyalty (this is why Reddit ecommerce is on the rise).
So, while AI takes care of the transactional side of things, your job is to build and strengthen the emotional one. There are small ways you can do this, like keeping your brand values front and center, investing in creative campaigns aimed at growing trust, and offering human touchpoints (customer service is a good one for this).
The data from Salsify’s upcoming report makes one thing clear: curiosity around AI shopping agents is already here, and adoption isn’t far behind. More than half of consumers are open to experimenting with autonomous shopping tools, and that curiosity will only continue to grow as these systems become more capable and connected.
For brands, this is the moment to pay attention. The companies that get in early and start acting now will be ahead of the game when the next wave of commerce comes. Waiting until it’s mainstream means playing catch-up in a world that’s already moving fast.
But remember, agentic commerce won’t replace human decision-making. That’s not what it’s for. Shoppers will always care about values, experience, and brand connection, but they’ll increasingly expect AI to make the shopping process faster, smarter, and more intuitive.