AI agents like Instinct and Muse are quickly becoming personal shoppers — and some are finding the tools need to be kept on a short leash.
From finding cheap airline tickets to ordering groceries, three shoppers told Business Insider that they are using the agents to automate parts of their shopping. Some say the decision has saved them time and found them deals they would not have found on their own.
But even those impressed with AI agents as shopping assistants say they’re using them carefully. Sometimes, the agents order the wrong thing. In other cases, users say they want to make the purchase themselves, or at least add another layer of security, rather than handing their credit card information directly to AI.
The shoppers’ experiences also point to a big question as the holiday shopping season approaches: How much can shoppers delegate, if they want to at all, to AI agents?
Plane tickets, ballet shoes, and 20 pounds of chicken wings
Austin Welch, who works in finance in Houston, said that he’s used Instinct for several kinds of purchases since getting an invite to use the AI agent in late August.
Welch said that he’s fed the agent a list of 10 flights that he needs to take over the next six months, asked it to monitor prices, and ping him when it thinks they’re cheapest. Instinct also found him a referral code for a United Airlines-branded credit card with a bigger mile bonus than he could find elsewhere, he said.
He also texts Instinct to order groceries for him, something that has become “really, really useful in my life,” he said.
The agent has made mistakes. Once, he asked Instinct to order chicken wings and drumsticks so that he could make dinner for himself and his partner. He didn’t specify the amount, but expected a small pack.
Later, 20 pounds of chicken wings showed up on his doorstep — an order that Instinct had executed. Welch suspects that Instinct saw some larger grocery purchases in his past and inferred that he wanted a similar quantity.
“We were shamelessly eating chicken wings for about five or six days straight for every meal,” he said.
Loni Stark, vice president of strategy and product at Adobe, said that she created Molty, her own agent, using OpenClaw in February. The agent has researched products that she’s considered buying, Stark said, though she hasn’t connected a payment option.
Stark said she has also used Museli, her custom Muse agent, to buy a pair of ballet shoes through Nordstrom’s website. The agent handled the whole process and got her permission to pay before ordering, she said.
She also used the agent for a more draining task after the purchase: Asking Nordstrom support for rewards points on the purchase after the agent didn’t include her loyalty number.
It didn’t work, but it was worth a try, Stark said. “I figured maybe Museli could negotiate something for me,” she said.
Not everyone is letting AI agents press ‘buy’
Amando Komoda, who lives in Minneapolis and runs a business that sells supplies for dry-aging meat, said he has used Instinct to set up alerts for products, such as a tough-to-find Raspberry Pi chip, instead of searching for them himself.
Often, though, Komoda makes the purchase himself. He’s found that Instinct cannot always complete the Captcha puzzle required at some checkouts.
Even when Komoda lets the agent make the purchase, he said he gives permission first and uses a single-use credit card to prevent the agent from making unauthorized charges.
“I wouldn’t give it access to my best credit card,” he said. “I’ve watched enough sci-fi movies that I can’t trust it completely.”
With the holiday season coming up, many shoppers will likely use agents to decide which gifts to buy, said Vipin Porwal, founder and CEO of Smarty, an online shopping rewards platform.
Many people will likely want to make the final purchase themselves, he added, given their hesitancy around handing over their payment information to an agent.
“It’ll be research, finding the best price, and then consumers still go and press that final buy button,” Porwal said.
For many consumers, shopping is also a form of entertainment, Adobe’s Stark said. Shoppers still like visiting stores or scrolling on their phones for a good deal.
AI agents might augment those activities rather than completely replace them, she added.
“We don’t like the anxiety of wondering whether we got the best price or not,” Stark said. “We’re going to offload that to agents.”
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