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Can AI Shopping Agents Be Trusted?

https://www.f-secure.com/en/partners/insights/can-ai-shopping-agents-be-trusted-we-built-one-to-find-out
11•ddaniel10•1h ago

Comments

jdw64•32m ago
But what I'm more curious about is why you'd need to give shopping instructions to an AI in the first place.
sublinear•21m ago
The provided example is really bad and ignores why customer service is sometimes a good idea. I guess it's been so bad and corrupted by disingenuous marketing for so long that people have forgotten.

Suppose you need to buy some stuff for an upcoming project or vacation, but don't want to go down a research rabbit hole for the next hour(s) to cure your ignorance. Suppose you don't even want to have a conversation with the AI. You just want it to build a shopping cart. At most, hopefully, your effort is just pruning the cart before placing the order (if even that).

I'm not saying AI wouldn't be corrupted like human customer service. I'm saying that we're actually pretty close to this already on Amazon with their AI, but not all ecommerce can be or has to be Amazon.

charcircuit•18m ago
Because people want to participate in activities that cost money. It's easy to see use cases like an AI agent notifying someone that a band they like is coming to town and asking if they want to secure tickets to the show.
10729287•15m ago
« Nothing to hide » evolved to « nothing to think ».
simianwords•31m ago
> The demo uses Claude Haiku rather than newer models like Opus or Fable. This is because I'm assuming that shopping agents of the future won't use newer, more expensive models, even though they're more reliable and secure. I suspect it'll come down to cutting costs, and using a cheaper model is one of the easiest ways to save money.

Stopped reading here. Author has little idea of the industry.

avazhi•29m ago
> Picture this: it's 2027. A chilly spring is approaching, and you want a new coat before the Super El Niño. Instead of scrolling through endless online stores, comparing reviews, checking size charts, and hunting for discount codes, you tell your AI shopping agent what you're looking for — and it takes care of the rest.

Why would they AI slop this?

Is this supposed to be ironic and I’m missing the joke?

If it takes you less time to ‘write’ something than it does to read, I’m not reading it.

j16sdiz•7m ago
I think this is (was?) a good writing style, until it is everywhere.
charcircuit•27m ago
>The demo uses Claude Haiku rather than newer models like Opus or Fable. This is because I'm assuming that shopping agents of the future won't use newer, more expensive models,

Why are we assuming that shopping agents are going to be using the model that is easiest to fall for prompt injections? Only testing a year old, small model is going to lead to a misleading conclusion.

simianwords•25m ago
Author doesn’t understand cost dynamics of the industry - that prices keep falling.

Author also needs to make a point, and can’t do so if they are using a powerful model.

moomoo11•16m ago
this is the issue most people don't understand, or maybe they're incapable of understanding.

next year, astra will be $2/1M or whatever (point is - cheaper) and whatever model is $10/1M will be insane like astra feels today.

also, in any agentic workflow, you use models of various levels together... not just one model of one level...

simianwords•6m ago
Also the author is deliberately chooses a model that is 1 year old and was supposed to be underpowered even then. If cost was deciding factor, they could’ve chosen Luna.

  Model                       AA Index   Cost/task
  Claude 4.5 Haiku (thinking)    17       $0.21
  GPT-6 Luna (low)               21       $0.0045

Luna (low) scores higher and costs about 47x less per task and performs better.

Question is: if cost were so crucial, why didn’t they choose a model that was 47x cheaper?

ares623•12m ago
"We will give you the ability to do shopping 24/7 so you never have to worry about it again and focus on more important things"

"Cool! Will we get the money to do said 24/7 shopping as well?"

"No."

"Oh..."

"In fact, you'll have even less money to do the normal shopping you do now!"

"Oh..."

"There's more! The things you used to buy with the remaining money you have will cost even more!"

"Oh..."

"But you can do it 24/7 though."

"Sweet!"

Havoc•6m ago
> I ran the agent 100 times. In 88% of the tests, it didn't open the external website. It either hallucinated a discount code or simply ignored the instructions.

Bad model? Don’t think I’ve ever seen a model ignore a link in instructions. It always wants to see what’s there

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