Your Al Shopping Assistant Is Selling You Out

trusting AI to give you deals, is like trusting the company to not lie to you, not use buzzwords, not kill their own products to make you buy again.

trusting, or even listening to companies means you're being fucked.

A group of researchers from Princeton and the University of Washington studied how large language models behave when user interests conflict with platform incentives. In particular, they considered when a sponsored option is worse, more expensive, unnecessary, or potentially harmful, but it gets recommended anyway. Their main case study is booking a flight. Across twenty-three models, all but eight recommended the more expensive sponsored option more than half the time. Their paper also demonstrates how AI advertising is framed as a kind of advice—a helpful assistant becoming strangely enthusiastic about a product you never asked for.

That's because it's not your AI Shopping Assistant, it's their AI Salesperson.

You think the person at the car dealership is there to help you out?

Honey extension moment

People are actually using AI shopping assistants?