AI shopping assistant

How does an AI shopping assistant work?

It pairs a language model with live product data. The model understands a description of what you need (“a quiet cordless vacuum for a one-bed flat, under £200”); the data — prices, stock, specifications, reviews — comes from web search, retailers’ catalogues or product feeds that merchants send to the platform.

A typical session runs like this: the assistant asks a few clarifying questions, shows suggestions, and you narrow them down. You end up with a shortlist, the trade-offs and links to shops. ChatGPT’s shopping research, launched on 24 November 2025 for logged-in Free, Go, Plus and Pro users, is a clear example: after a few minutes it returns a personalised buying guide.

How is an assistant different from a shopping agent?

	AI shopping assistant	Shopping agent (agentic commerce)
What it does	advises, searches, compares	can place and pay for an order within limits you set
Who pays, and where	you, on the retailer’s site	the agent, after you confirm, e.g. via a saved wallet
Available in the UK (Oct 2026)	yes (ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity)	no — Google, OpenAI and Perplexity launched agentic buying in the US

The line is blurring. In the US, Google lets you track a price and have it buy the item when it drops within budget — but only after you confirm. Google said in May 2026 that this checkout will reach the UK “later”.

Where do the results come from, and are they ads?

It depends on the platform, so read its rules. OpenAI says ChatGPT’s product results are selected independently and are not ads, and that merchants are ranked by availability, price, quality and whether they make or primarily sell the item. Ads on the Free and Go plans are labelled as sponsored and kept separate from answers.

An assistant run by a single retailer or marketplace only shows that retailer’s range. It is convenient, but it will not compare prices elsewhere.

What should you watch out for?

Assistants make mistakes. OpenAI warns that its shopping research can get prices and availability wrong, and that the price in a first answer is not necessarily the lowest. Labels such as “Most popular” and review summaries are model-generated. Always confirm the seller, final price, delivery cost and returns policy on the retailer’s own page — your contract is with the shop.

For a step-by-step guide with prompts and a list of traps, see How to Shop With ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity in the UK.