This week brought big news about how robots and artificial intelligence are changing shopping and advertising. Amazon's AI shopping helper called Rufus just hit a huge milestone - it is expected to help sell an extra $10 billion worth of stuff in its first full year of work. That is like having a super smart salesperson helping customers find exactly what they want to buy.

ChatGPT, the popular AI chatbot, is now letting people shop directly inside the app. If you are using Shopify (a store-building website), your customers can buy things right from ChatGPT without leaving the app. This is huge because it makes shopping easier and faster. Some big brands like Spanx and SKIMS already tested it successfully.

Google also announced new AI tools for stores that want to sell things around the holidays. These tools help stores show better ads and pictures to customers by using smart AI technology. Google added special features for testing which ads work best and tools that help smaller companies compete with bigger ones.

Nearly 70% of marketing leaders think AI agents will change everything about how they do their jobs. An AI agent is like having a robot worker that can make decisions and take actions on its own. Right now, marketers are still figuring out how to use these tools the right way.

The shopping world is changing fast. People can now buy things from Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest without leaving the app. Instead of going to a separate website, all the shopping is happening inside social media apps. This week showed that AI is not just helping people - it is actually doing the selling work for companies. The future of shopping and advertising looks very different from today.