AI’ll get that! Agentic commerce could signal the dawn of personal shopping ‘AI-gents’

• Our new report highlights the ways agentic AI could transform our lives from digital personal assistants to shopping agents. 
• AI may soon be used to make purchases, look out for sales, source financing agreements and even negotiate prices with sellers. 
• We advise that technological advancements must not come at the cost of data privacy. 

Our new report released today shows how the rise of agentic artificial intelligence (AI) could transform the way we live our lives, with personal shopping ‘AI-gents’ potentially arriving within the next five years. 

Agentic AI refers to artificial intelligence that allows for more activities to be automated - making decisions, interacting with its environment, solving problems in real time and mimicking some types of reasoning and planning. 

So-called agentic commerce is set to become a mainstay of people’s busy lives, with customers’ personal AI-powered agents anticipating shopping needs and making proactive purchases based on learned and defined preferences or behaviours, along with knowledge of upcoming plans, rather than needing specific prompts.   

This means that digital shopping companions could soon check personal bank accounts to ensure a purchase is within monthly budget, assess how it will affect other spending plans, schedule purchases around seasonal sale events such as the January sales and even negotiate a price directly with sellers.   

This might even extend to agents seeking out tailored financing options to present to their human shopper for agreement.    

William Malcolm, Executive Director of Regulatory Risk and Innovation, said:  

“Agentic AI will have the capacity to make decisions and take actions independently. Our own personal AI agents could be paying for goods, booking flights and helping with household finances.  

“While the potential benefits could be transformational, the public needs assurances their personal information is secure and well managed before placing their trust in agentic systems.  

“Strong data protection foundations can help build that public trust and can help scale the fast and safe adoption of AI. Throughout 2026 the ICO will actively monitor advancements and work with AI developers and deployers to ensure they are clear on what the law requires of them.” 

Our Tech Futures report can be downloaded here.