Good afternoon.
A big welcome to all the Stratechery subscribers who were introduced—or reintroduced— to me and The Aisle thanks to my conversation with Ben Thompson last week. I loved nerding out with him on Amazon, Walmart, and the new wave of personal AI agents, and I’m glad that so many of you were intrigued enough to come find me here.
A friendly reminder that you’ll need to become a paid subscriber to access most of my work in full, and also to attend our subscriber events. Two of the subscription tiers include a 7-day free trial if you need some extra convincing.
Moving on, I have to admit that this last month of agentic AI launches has felt like one of the most meaningful periods of this new era of commerce, even if you believe, like I do, that there are still many crucial questions standing in the way of a true e-commerce industry overhaul. Among them: Do everyday people want to buy this way? And if so, will enough mainstream consumer businesses concede a direct customer relationship to allow agent-powered shopping to happen on their properties? As I’ve argued, Amazon shouldn’t feel a need to do so…yet, even if that opens up some opportunities for a frenemy like Shopify or a rival like Walmart.
I’m also continuing to test out several of the new personal agents, including Muse, Instinct, and OpenAI’s Dots. I used the last one recently to begin overhauling my personal website. Still more work to be done.
A quick catch-up on the past week’s relevant news before moving on:
TikTok is testing an AI Shopping Assistant and Buy Direct checkout capabilities, letting brands sell inside the app without integrating with TikTok Shop, and allowing consumers to easily purchase items in their feed without navigating to a TikTok storefront as well. TikTok’s commerce efforts have been criminally under-covered, including in this newsletter. That is going to change going forward.
Sierra and Meta announced Personal Agent Protocol, meant to help your personal AI agents like Muse or Instinct or Dot interact with businesses. Shopify, Stripe and Walmart are among the partners, with the first specification due later this month. My first reaction was: great, another protocol. But in all seriousness, agents really do need help with all the dead ends they encounter on the web. Amazon, of course, isn’t involved.
ChatGPT added virtual try-on for clothing. Upload a selfie and see a preview of yourself wearing the item. Part of what has held back virtual try-on technology is how expensive it can be at massive scale. I’m interested to see how committed OpenAI will remain to it if consumers grow to love it.
Indian adtech and commerce tech unicorn InMobi is the latest company to come out with an easy way to gut check how ready your shopping site is for this next era of AI-powered commerce. The quick takeaway? Nearly two-thirds of e-commerce sites aren’t.
I have a bunch of calls and messages out to help dive deeper into some of the above for future issues. Have a tip? Just reply to this email me or message me on Signal if you prefer.
Now on to the good stuff…
The Center Aisle
Since I started covering retail and e-commerce more than a dozen years ago, the promise of truly personalized, non-creepy online shopping experiences has rarely lived up to the hype. At times, it’s felt like the best we’ve gotten is retargeting ads that follow us around the internet even after we’ve made a purchase.
Well, HP—yes, the 87-year-old computer and printer company—is betting that its AI web overhaul is a taste of what online shoppers will come to expect in the future.
I admit I was not expecting a lot when the pitch landed in my inbox. I tried to be diplomatic about it, but I told the HP executive showing me its new AI shopping experience as much. I’m pretty sure he understood.
But when I experienced the demo, and then played around with the new personalized shopping site myself, I was intrigued by what I saw—at least directionally. Of course, there are many improvements to make and some big questions left unanswered. Let’s dive in.
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