Maybe the AI Shopping Agent won't have your best interests in mind

I keep seeing takes about how AI shopping agents will help kill the sectors of the economy that extract money by adding enough friction to experiences that people are willing to pay more to avoid the annoyance. If this ends up coming completely true, it'll probably be a good thing (for consumers at least.) Running an AI model is far from cheap. Yet, many people have already gotten used to having AI features available for free. If people expect the service to be free, but it costs money to run the service, then there's one tried-and-true way to monetize: ads! Also selling user data, but mainly ads! Expect "free" agentic AI shopping services in the future to buy from the highest advertising bidder, not necessarily getting you the best deal. It'll save you the annoyance of shopping yourself, maybe to the point where everyone will rely on these services like we rely on search engines to browse the web. But don't expect this to actually improve your consumer experience, especially in terms…