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AI Personal Shoppers Hunt Down Bargain Buys 

A participant walks in front of an AI banner during the Microsoft AI Tour event in Jakarta, Indonesia, 27 May 2025. (EPA)
A participant walks in front of an AI banner during the Microsoft AI Tour event in Jakarta, Indonesia, 27 May 2025. (EPA)
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AI Personal Shoppers Hunt Down Bargain Buys 

A participant walks in front of an AI banner during the Microsoft AI Tour event in Jakarta, Indonesia, 27 May 2025. (EPA)
A participant walks in front of an AI banner during the Microsoft AI Tour event in Jakarta, Indonesia, 27 May 2025. (EPA)

Internet giants are diving deeper into e-commerce with digital aides that know shoppers' likes, let them virtually try clothes on, hunt for deals and even place orders.

The rise of virtual personal shoppers springs from generative artificial intelligence (AI) being put to work in "agents" specializing in specific tasks and given autonomy to complete them independently.

"This is basically the next evolution of shopping experiences," said CFRA Research analyst Angelo Zino.

Google last week unveiled shopping features built into a new "AI Mode".

It can take a person's own photo and meld it with that of a skirt, shirt or other piece of clothing spotted online, showing how it will look on them.

The AI adjusts the clothing size to fit, accounting for how fabrics drape, according to Google head of advertising and commerce Vidhya Srinivasan.

Shoppers can then set the price they would pay and leave the AI to relentlessly browse the internet for a deal, alerting the shopper when it finds one, and asking if it should buy using Google's payment platform.

"They're taking on Amazon a little bit," Techsponential analyst Avi Greengart said of Google.

The tool is also a way to make money from AI by increasing online traffic and opportunities to show ads, Greengart added.

The Silicon Valley tech titan did not respond to a query regarding whether it is sharing in revenue from shopping transactions.

- Bartering bots? -

OpenAI added a shopping feature to ChatGPT earlier this year, enabling the chatbot to respond to requests with product suggestions, consumer reviews and links to merchant websites.

Perplexity AI late last year began letting subscribers pay for online purchases without leaving its app.

Amazon in April added a "Buy for Me" mode to its Rufus digital assistant, allowing users to command it to make purchases at retailer websites off Amazon's platform.

Walmart head of technology Hari Vasudev recently spoke about adding an AI agent to the retail behemoth's online shopping portal, while also working with partners to make sure their digital agents keep Walmart products in mind.

Global payment networks Visa and Mastercard in April each said their technical systems were modernized to allow payment transactions by digital agents.

"As AI agents start to take over the bulk of product discovery and the decision-making process, retailers must consider how to optimize for this new layer of AI shoppers," said Elise Watson of Clarkston Consulting.

Retailers are likely to be left groping in the dark when it comes to what makes a product attractive to AI agents, according to Watson.

- Knowing the customer -

Analyst Zino does not expect AI shoppers to cause an e-commerce industry upheaval, but he does see the technology benefitting Google and Meta.

Not only do the Internet rivals have massive amounts of data about their users, but they are also among frontrunners in the AI race.

"They probably have more information on the consumer than anyone else out there," Zino said of Google and Meta.

Tech company access to data about users hits the hot-button issue of online privacy and who should control personal information.

Google plans to refine consumer profiles based on what people search for and promises that shoppers will need to authorize access to additional information such as email or app use.

Trusting a chatbot with one's buying decisions may spook some people, and while the technology might be in place the legal and ethical framework for it is not.

"The agent economy is here," said PSE Consulting managing director Chris Jones.

"The next phase of e-commerce will depend on whether we can trust machines to buy on our behalf."

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Technology

UK's Nothing Splashes Color on New Phones to Shake Up 'Boring' Tech

Carl Pei, CEO of Nothing, poses for pictures at Nothing headquarters in Kings Cross, in London, Britain, February 26, 2026. REUTERS/Jaimi Joy
Carl Pei, CEO of Nothing, poses for pictures at Nothing headquarters in Kings Cross, in London, Britain, February 26, 2026. REUTERS/Jaimi Joy
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UK's Nothing Splashes Color on New Phones to Shake Up 'Boring' Tech

Carl Pei, CEO of Nothing, poses for pictures at Nothing headquarters in Kings Cross, in London, Britain, February 26, 2026. REUTERS/Jaimi Joy
Carl Pei, CEO of Nothing, poses for pictures at Nothing headquarters in Kings Cross, in London, Britain, February 26, 2026. REUTERS/Jaimi Joy

Nothing, the smartphone maker founded in London by Carl Pei, launched new mid-tier handsets and headphones on Thursday, adding new colors to its white, black and grey palette to appeal to digitally adept younger customers.

Pei, a Swedish national who previously co-founded Chinese brand OnePlus, started Nothing in 2020 with the aim of making consumer technology less monotonous. He said smartphones had become "kind of boring", with only incremental improvements in batteries, screens and cameras.

The Phone (4a), available in pink and blue as well as black and white, and Phone (4a) Pro, ⁠available in pink, ⁠black and silver, will retail at 349 pounds or 349 euros, and 499 pounds or 479 euros, respectively.

Both phones feature improved cameras and the company's signature glyph interface, a system of LED lights on the back.

Headphone (a) has up to five days of battery life and integrated physical controls in the ear cups, the company said. It will be available in pink, ⁠yellow, black and white, priced at 149 pounds, $199 and 159 euros.

"We're giving our portfolio a splash of color and secondly we're advancing some of our AI initiatives," Reuters quoted Pei as saying.

"We started Nothing to break that monotony and make tech more fun," he said in an interview.

Nothing's first phone in 2022 stood out in a sea of similar Android devices with its transparent design and distinctive backlit glyph features.

Pei said the company was building scale and capability so it could launch more novel AI-focused products.

"We cannot just create audio products and smartphones because those are basically already solved problems," he ⁠said.

"I think ⁠we need to usher in a new wave of human-computer interaction. That will be the next step for us."

The company, which raised $200 million at a $1.3 billion valuation last year, plans to spin off its India-focused, budget-oriented devices brand called CMF.

Pei said Nothing was considering listing that business, but had not made a firm decision. "India has one of the most active capital markets in the world," he said.

He said Nothing itself would be IPO-ready by the end of 2028, though the target was "more like an internal call to arms to just get our act together, build all the structures we need".

"Whether we pull the trigger or not really depends on the market conditions and our plans at that time," he said.

Technology

Google to Open German Center for 'AI Development'

Google has launched a massive AI investment drive in Germany. Tobias SCHWARZ / AFP
Google has launched a massive AI investment drive in Germany. Tobias SCHWARZ / AFP
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Google to Open German Center for 'AI Development'

Google has launched a massive AI investment drive in Germany. Tobias SCHWARZ / AFP
Google has launched a massive AI investment drive in Germany. Tobias SCHWARZ / AFP

Google will open an AI center in Berlin on Thursday, the latest sign of Europe's deepening reliance on US firms in cutting edge technologies despite the continent's stated aim to catch up with its rivals.

Germany's ministry for digital affairs told AFP the center will bring together cloud computing and data infrastructure, "AI development" operations as well as a space for cooperation between start-ups and research centers.

Europe is struggling to gain ground in the battle for AI dominance with the United States and China, which are pumping vast sums into the field and producing the most advanced models underpinning the technology.

The Google project is part of a 5.5 billion euro ($6.4 billion) investment drive into Europe's top economy announced by the US tech titan in November, planned to include a new data center.

The firm said at the time it would renovate its Berlin office to add three floors equipped with meeting rooms, a new conference room and a demo space but made no mention of an AI center in the capital.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz's coalition has signaled it wants to make progress in the area as part of efforts to revive the struggling economy, and there have been a flurry of announcements related to AI recently.

"I want technological leadership to once again become the core of our economic model," said Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil last month at the opening of an industrial AI hub, spearheaded by German telecoms giant Deutsche Telekom and US chip juggernaut Nvidia.

- 'Enormous challenges' -

But while efforts are being made to build up infrastructure and data storage capacities, the "challenges are enormous" for Germany, said Janis Hecker of the digital business association Bitkom.

The government still "underestimates the importance of these technologies for value creation, but also for sovereignty and the defense of our values", he said.

The United States builds more computing capacity each year than Germany has in total, the group says.

According to its calculations, one-thousandth of the proposed central government budget for 2026 is dedicated to AI, and only a fraction of a massive pot of funding to modernize the country's infrastructure is dedicated to cutting-edge technologies.

Against this backdrop, Google's investments in Germany are a "big win", Bitkom believes.

But such investments add to concerns about Europe's technological dependencies on the United States at a time of strained ties under the administration of US President Donald Trump.

Even when American tech giants are not the main players in a project, they often still play a vital role in areas from providing cloud infrastructure to cutting-edge semiconductors.

At a summit on so-called "digital sovereignty" in November, Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron backed the idea of favoring European firms in a bid to develop regional champions.

"Sovereignty does not mean self-sufficiency, but strategic capacity for action," says Barbara Engels of the IW Institute.

She also welcomed Google's projects but said that "we must use this infrastructure while developing our own capabilities".

Antonio Krueger, head of the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), believes it makes no sense to try to overtake China and the United States in areas such as producing the most advanced AI models.

Instead, Europe should leverage its advantages in industry, he said, adding that data collected by companies can by use to train smaller AI models to "solve very specific tasks".

In this area, "the race is still wide open," he said.

Technology

AI May be Creating Instead of Destroying Jobs for Now, ECB Blog Argues

FILE PHOTO: A view of the European Central Bank (ECB) headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, March 6, 2025. REUTERS/Jana Rodenbusch/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A view of the European Central Bank (ECB) headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, March 6, 2025. REUTERS/Jana Rodenbusch/File Photo
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AI May be Creating Instead of Destroying Jobs for Now, ECB Blog Argues

FILE PHOTO: A view of the European Central Bank (ECB) headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, March 6, 2025. REUTERS/Jana Rodenbusch/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A view of the European Central Bank (ECB) headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, March 6, 2025. REUTERS/Jana Rodenbusch/File Photo

The increasing use of artificial intelligence by firms may be creating some jobs in the euro zone rather than destroying them as many fear, a European Central Bank blog post argued on Wednesday.

Economists have been debating whether AI could put white collar staff out of work, and a recent study by Germany's Ifo Institute found that more than a quarter of German firms expect AI to ⁠lead to job ⁠cuts in the next five years.

But the ECB's own Survey on the Access to Finance of Enterprises found that companies making significant use of AI are more likely to take on additional staff ⁠in the near term.

"In other words, AI-intensive firms tend, on average, to hire rather than fire," the blog post, which is not necessarily the view of the ECB, said.

Firms planning to invest in AI are also more likely to have positive expectations for future employment growth, the blog argued.

"This is true regardless of the level of planned AI investment ⁠and ⁠suggests that a pause in hiring due to investment in AI technology is also unlikely over the next year," the blog, written by two ECB staff economists, said.

However, the outlook may change on the longer horizon, the authors said.

Most of the gloomier surveys cover longer horizons than the ECB's own question and the outlook could change once AI starts to significantly transform production processes.