AI will make a list but shoppers should check it twice

Christmas shopping may in the future be a task handled by AI bots armed with a consumer’s credit card, specific instructions, and permission to add items to shopping carts online.

One in three Australians are already willing to run AI bots on their shopping lists, but more than half have serious concerns about their security and what happens if transactions go wrong, a study has found.

Payments provider Worldpay revealed the findings in a survey on Friday, revealing that younger shoppers are by far the most enthusiastic about using AI to fill their festive stockings.

The study follows acquisition specifications released by several popular AI tools, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, and the government’s release of its National AI Plan, which stopped imposing mandatory guardrails for the technology.

The research asked more than 3,000 Australians their thoughts on AI shopping assistants and found a third (34 per cent) were ready to use technology to shop for them.

This figure was significantly higher among younger Australians; 52 percent of respondents ages 18 to 34 could easily transfer their shopping lists to a bot.

Worldpay Australia country manager Colin Baines said although he was surprised by the high approval rate, the biggest motivation behind the adoption of “agency trading” was saving money and time.

“If you look at the biggest benefits that our consumers see, 60 per cent found that cost is one of the main reasons for using it, where a bot can actually help them find the lowest price for that good,” he told AAP.

“They see real value in ease of use, eliminating the task of doing the legwork themselves and letting a bot do the legwork.”

Many Australians were still concerned about the concept; however, the research shows that more than half of those surveyed are concerned about fraud and losing control over their finances.

Mr Baines said greater transparency about how the technology works would be necessary for its widespread use, as well as clear policies such as prompt order cancellations when a purchase goes wrong.

“For this to really start driving adoption, the industry needs to bring a few components together – it needs to think about how to build trust and security for consumers so they feel comfortable being able to use it,” he said.

“The good news is people want to try it, there’s an appetite in the market to do it; it’s just taking these ingredients (right) to help people feel comfortable.”

OpenAI launched Instant Checkout in ChatGPT in September, and Google announced a feature in November called Agentic Checkout, which tracks the price of an item and purchases it if the user has permission.