Retailers can't out-build the shopper's AI. Amazon lost in court trying to block it.
Retailers can't out-build the shopper's AI. Amazon lost in court trying to block it.
In the thirteenth episode of Assistant to the CMO, Lexie Meskouris speaks with Will Nash and Harjot Singh about what a retailer can do when the shopper arrives holding their own AI, and whether either of the two obvious answers still works.
Narvar's US-only 2026 holiday report found 65 percent of shoppers plan to use AI for part of their Christmas shopping, and 8 percent of retail decision-makers feel very confident using it. Will Nash would track the 43 percent doing gift discovery instead, and adds a third source for a model's opinion of your brand: your live product catalogue. Harjot Singh argues a retailer cannot out-build the shopper's own agent, which knows the customer when the retailer's site starts from nothing.
The second half is the Ninth Circuit vacating Amazon's injunction against Perplexity's Comet, which turned on where a screenshot gets processed. Will has no view on the case. Harjot argues nobody designed that architecture for a court, GPU costs did, and that blocking agents is futile. The Monday move is smaller: put your returns and shipping terms on the product page as plain text.
The second half is the Ninth Circuit vacating Amazon's injunction against Perplexity's Comet, which turned on where a screenshot gets processed. Will has no view on the case. Harjot argues nobody designed that architecture for a court, GPU costs did, and that blocking agents is futile. The Monday move is smaller: put your returns and shipping terms on the product page as plain text.
Highlights of this Episode Include:
- The Number That Costs You Money: Will skips the 65 percent headline for the 43 percent of US shoppers using AI for gift discovery.
- It Knows You, Your Website Doesn't: Harjot's case that a retailer cannot out-build an assistant the shopper already carries.
- A Third Layer, and You Maintain It: Will adds the live product catalogue to memory and search as a source of what a model thinks of you.
- It Cannot See Your Photographs: Harjot on why shopping indexers mostly read text, because classifying every image costs too much.
- Amazon Lost on GPU Economics: The Ninth Circuit ruling turned on where Comet's screenshot is processed, which Harjot says hardware decided.
- Nobody Is Selling You the Future: Harjot on vendors pitching agent-ready commerce when the thing itself is still an experiment.
- Put the Returns Terms in Words: Will's move for when price is level, and Harjot's test is whether the page still reads with images off.
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New episodes of Assistant to the CMO land every Thursday.
