Bank of America Securities projects that ChatGPT will handle approximately 20 billion shopping-related messages in 2025, underscoring how deeply artificial intelligence (AI) is integrating into the commerce journey.
Last year’s holiday season saw global retail sales surge to $1.2 trillion, including $282 billion in the United States, as AI chatbot and agent engagement jumped 42%. But the same systems fueling that growth are melding discovery and checkout into a single step, widening exposure to fraud, chargebacks and questions of consumer trust. Those pressures will shape this holiday season.
From Discovery to Checkout in a Single Step
With OpenAI’s Instant Checkout already live, conversational platforms are becoming marketplaces. The shift is shortening the distance between finding a product and buying it. As PYMNTS reported, “AI agents are fast becoming the new gatekeepers of commerce, shrinking discovery from thousands of listings to a handful of curated options and collapsing checkout into a single click.”
Adding to that, “Being discoverable is not enough,” said Matthew F. Ferraro, partner at Crowell & Moring and former senior counselor for cybersecurity at the DHS. “You must execute transactions seamlessly and securely, or you risk losing trust with both consumers and platforms.”
Amazon’s AI seller tools already show where the standard is moving: dynamic pricing, inventory rerouting and ad optimization designed to ensure the purchase flow never breaks. Retailers unable to match that level of reliability risk being deprioritized by the very agents consumers now rely on.
The strain is most visible in payments. PYMNTS has reported that chargebacks could spike 45 to 60 days after the holiday season because of “AI-enabled fraud and ‘friendly’ chargebacks.” Fraudsters are exploiting conversational interfaces with spoofed agents and synthetic identities. Mastercard says its generative AI fraud models can catch anomalies in real time, potentially saving billions in losses.
Trust as the Final Filter
Even flawless execution and strong fraud defenses won’t secure visibility if consumers and platforms don’t trust how brands use AI. “Every company should have a clear AI policy that governs internal use cases and consumer interactions,” said Shane St. Hill, chief legal and compliance officer at Studs.
That expectation is already shaping the market. The announcement that Meta will use conversational AI interactions to generate personalized ads drew immediate backlash, with critics demanding more clarity on data use and disclosure. Retailers that fail to meet that standard risk being penalized by algorithms or ignored by consumers altogether.
Source: https://www.pymnts.com/
