Good afternoon.
Therabody, the maker of Theragun massage guns, LED light-therapy masks and other wellness devices, launched a new AI shopping assistant this week named Jason. I'm choosing to believe the company chose the name specifically to get me to write about it, even if I'm aware that Therabody's founder is also named Jason.
The company built its new shopping assistant using technology from Amazon Web Services, going from development to launch in less than 90 days, the company says. That’s part of the reason the news caught my attention: I hadn’t seen many live examples of AWS’ “Agentic Shopping Assistant” tech in action. The AI Jason asks shoppers about their needs, budgets, and lifestyles before recommending products and explaining the science behind them, including citations to clinical studies which I found unique for a shopping assistant.
Launches like this one also raise broader questions that could go a long way toward determining how the AI shopping era plays out: Will consumers expect this kind of assistance from their favorite do-everything AI agents like Muse, as well as directly from the brands and retailers they shop with? Or will one of those experiences eventually become their preferred way to shop?
Elsewhere, new research from fraud prevention company Forter suggests AI could play a significant role in this year’s holiday shopping season. In a survey of more than 2,000 U.S. adults conducted by The Harris Poll, 67% said they plan to use AI in some way for holiday shopping, while 43% said AI had already helped them discover or purchase from a retailer they hadn't shopped with before. But enthusiasm for autonomous purchases has limits: Just 17% of holiday shoppers said they'd be comfortable letting AI purchase a gift costing more than $100 without their confirmation. I mean, logical.
A couple of caveats: The survey measures stated intentions, not actual shopping behavior, and doesn't distinguish between retailer-owned AI assistants and independent agents like Muse or Instinct. It also buckets together activities like finding deals and researching products with actual autonomous buying. I continue to maintain that the bigger near-term shift will happen earlier in the shopping journey, as AI assistants influence which brands and retailers consumers discover. One big question I'll be watching: How much will new advertising formats shape that discovery process?
Now on to the good stuff…
The Center Aisle
I know my friends down in Bentonville, Ark., probably don’t love how often Walmart gets compared to Amazon. (I mean, I wrote a whole book about the rivalry, so guilty as charged.) But today, the comparison is pretty much unavoidable.
Last month, Amazon blocked Meta’s Muse personal AI agent from shopping on its site—what some saw as a pretty significant roadblock for a new service that wants to handle shopping tasks on behalf of consumers, while others saw a huge opportunity for other retailers to fill in the gap. Indeed, just days later, Walmart was among a group of major retailers that Meta announced as new partners for Muse.
Now, Walmart isn't stopping at Muse. On Wednesday, the retailer essentially hung out a much bigger welcome sign for AI personal agents, announcing a new gateway that will allow a wider range of approved agents to shop Walmart and Sam’s Club on behalf of customers. It's also introducing tools that let shoppers control what those agents can buy and how much they can spend.
“Customers decide how they want to shop,” Walmart CEO John Furner told The Aisle on Wednesday. “If they choose to use an agent, we want Walmart to be there and we want them to stay in charge. They decide what the agent can do on their behalf. Choosing more help shouldn’t mean giving up control.”
So how will this actually work? And what does Walmart stand to gain?
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