Shops in London show commercials of their home windows for ‘Friday’ gross sales as customers flock to the town’s procuring hubs on November 22, 2024.
Anadolu | Getty Photos
The emergence of AI procuring would not simply give shoppers entry to customized recommendation and hassle-free procuring, it additionally brings with it an elevated threat of digital fraud.
This Black Friday, for the primary time, shoppers and retailers alike are being warned concerning the perils of so-called “agentic procuring,” as shoppers flip to giant language fashions to seek for merchandise, evaluate choices, obtain customized suggestions, and even make purchases with out a lot human enter. These technological advances include their very own dangers.
“It undoubtedly makes my life simpler… however on the identical time, it additionally makes fraudsters’ life considerably simpler as nicely,” stated Michael Reitblat, CEO of Forter, an e-commerce prevention supplier.
In line with Reitblat, there was a 200% enhance in agentic procuring by shoppers over the previous six months. That has been accompanied by an almost tenfold enhance in fraudsters utilizing AI. “Consider it as sending 1000’s of robots into totally different shops to masquerade pretty much as good shoppers,” Reitblat informed CNBC’s “Squawk Field Europe.”
Whereas some retailers’ knee-jerk response has been to easily ban AI purchases, that may very well be a defective technique as increasingly shoppers use AI for procuring and driving good high quality visitors, Reitblat stated.
A report by McKinsey & Firm and The Enterprise of Style discovered that amongst style executives, AI and digital instruments had been seen as the one greatest alternative for the trade in 2026. To make sure merchandise are seen and favored by AI fashions, manufacturers should rethink advertising and marketing and e-commerce methods, the report famous, including that semantically wealthy information and API-accessible content material will probably be essential to success.
“It is advisable to use AI to combat AI,” Reitblat stated. “It is advisable to just be sure you’re leveraging higher information than fraudsters might have, and you’ll want to correctly consider: how do you authenticate the shoppers?”
Worth-conscious shoppers is one other issue retailers must cope with this 12 months as heightened commerce tensions and worries a few slowing financial system influence shoppers’ spending habits.
“Shopper confidence has been bumpy, and due to this fact the purchasers feeling like they’re getting real worth goes to be a giant factor for this 12 months,” stated Curry‘s Chief Companies Officer Dean Kramer.
“We all know analysis is a giant a part of how shoppers method Black Friday, ensuring they’re getting absolute worth.”