Christmas shopping could be a task performed by artificial intelligence bots in future, armed with a consumer’s credit card, specific instructions and permission to add goods to carts across the internet.
One in three Australians is willing to put AI bots to work on their shopping list, according to a study, but more than half hold serious concerns about their security and what happens if transactions go wrong.
Payment provider Worldpay revealed the findings on Friday in a survey that also found younger shoppers were by far the most enthusiastic about using AI to stuff festive stockings.
The study follows purchasing features released by several popular AI tools, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, and after the government released its National AI Plan which stopped short of introducing mandatory guardrails for the technology.
More than 2000 Australians were questioned about their thoughts on AI shopping assistants for the research, which found one-third (34 per cent) were ready to employ the technology to make purchases on their behalf.
That figure was significantly higher among younger Australians, with 52 per cent of participants aged between 18 and 34 comfortable handing their shopping lists over to a bot.
Saving money and time were the biggest motivations behind the acceptance of “agentic commerce”, Worldpay Australia country manager Colin Baines said, although he was surprised by its high rate of approval.
“If you look at the biggest benefits our consumers saw, 60 per cent of them saw cost as one of the main reasons for using it, where a bot could actually help them find the lowest price for that good,” he told AAP.
“They see a real value piece around convenience, removing that task of going to do the legwork yourself and allowing a bot to do that legwork.”
Many Australians were still concerned about the concept, however, with the research showing more than half of those surveyed were concerned about fraud and losing control over their finances.
Greater transparency about how the technology operated would be necessary for its widespread use, Mr Baines said, in addition to clear policies about what happened when a purchase went wrong, such as quick order cancellations.
“For this to really start to drive adoption, the industry needs to land a couple of components - it needs to think about how to build trust and safety for consumers so they feel comfortable to be able to use it,” he said.
“The good news upstream is that people want to try it, there’s an appetite in market to do it - it’s just getting those components (right) to help people be comfortable.”
OpenAI launched its Instant Checkout feature in ChatGPT in September, and Google announced a feature called Agentic Checkout in November that tracks the price of an item and buys it if it has a user’s permission.
