This week brought major announcements about AI agents changing how people shop and how companies sell things. An AI agent is like a smart computer helper that can understand what you want, talk with you, and even buy things for you without needing a human to help. Think of it like having a personal shopper inside your phone who can visit many stores at once and bring you the best products.

Google Opens New Shopping with AI Agents

Google announced it is building open ways for AI agents to shop across many different stores. The company is working with huge retailers like Walmart, Target, Etsy, and Wayfair, plus payment companies like Visa and Mastercard. This means when you ask an AI agent to find you a good backpack, it can search all these stores at once and show you the best choices. The data about products needs to be in a special format so AI agents can read it easily, kind of like giving the AI a map so it knows where everything is located.

Shopify Brings AI Agents to Stores

Shopify, a company that helps stores sell online, announced something called Agentic Storefronts. This means store products now appear inside conversations on ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot, which are popular AI chat tools. If you are chatting with ChatGPT and mention you need new shoes, the AI can show you shoes from Shopify stores and let you buy them right there in the chat. You do not need to leave the conversation or visit a website. This is a huge change because shopping moves from websites into conversations. Shopify also created SimGym, which is a practice tool that simulates how real shoppers will use AI agents, so Shopify can test and improve things before real customers try them.

Apple and Google Make a Big Deal

Apple announced it is using Google's Gemini AI as the main power behind Siri, Apple's voice assistant. This is a multi-year agreement, meaning they will work together for several years. With over two billion Apple devices around the world, this deal means Gemini will reach billions of people every day. When you ask Siri a question on your iPhone or iPad, Gemini will be thinking behind the scenes. Google is also adding shopping features to Gemini, letting people find products, get suggestions based on what they like, and buy things without leaving the app.

Other AI Agent Announcements

Many companies announced AI agent tools this week. Disney created an AI tool that helps plan marketing campaigns by understanding what audiences want. NBCUniversal announced an AI tool that watches TV shows and matches advertisements to the right moments automatically. Accenture invested in a company called Profitmind, which uses AI agents to help store owners manage inventory and set prices. Large marketing companies like Omnicom and Stagwell announced their own AI agent platforms to help with creative work and planning.

How This Changes Marketing and Selling

Marketers need to think completely differently now. In the past, stores wanted people to visit their websites. Now, products need to appear everywhere AI agents look—in conversations, recommendations, and searches. Companies must make sure their product information is clear, complete, and easy for AI to understand. Affiliate marketing, which means paying people to recommend your products, is becoming more important because these trusted recommendations help AI agents decide what to suggest. The future of shopping is less about websites and more about conversations with AI agents that find, explain, and sell products for you.

The Week Shows AI Agents Are Real

These announcements prove that AI agents are not just ideas anymore—they are actually here and changing how business works. From Google's shopping network to Shopify's storefronts to Apple using Gemini, AI agents are becoming the new way people and companies connect. As more stores join these networks and more AI assistants gain shopping powers, the next year of marketing will look very different from what came before. The companies that understand this change and prepare their products and messages for AI agents will do better than those that do not.