AI shopping assistants might not be the best bargain hunters
A new Microsoft and Arizona State University study shows that AI shopping agents have some big weaknesses.
In a simulated marketplace, these AI agents often just took the first decent offer they got, instead of checking for better deals—kind of like settling for the first thing you see online.
AI models and their decision-making
Popular AI models like GPT-4o and Gemini-2.5-Flash were easily fooled by fake reviews and clever scams that could send your money to shady sellers.
Only Claude Sonnet 4 held up better against these tricks.
When faced with lots of options, all the AIs got confused more easily and made worse decisions.
Bots should help you shop, not do everything for you
Microsoft says these bots should help you shop—not do everything for you.
They recommend keeping humans in the loop to avoid fraud and bad purchases.
So, while fully autonomous shopping assistants sound cool, they're not quite ready to handle your next online haul alone just yet.