According to CNBC, AI shopping is creating both opportunities and serious risks this Black Friday season. Consumers are increasingly using “agentic shopping” through large language models for product searches, comparisons, and even automated purchases. Forter CEO Michael Reitblat revealed there’s been a 200% increase in consumer AI shopping over the past six months, but that’s been matched by a nearly tenfold surge in fraudsters using AI. Reitblat described the fraud approach as “sending thousands of robots into different stores to masquerade as good consumers.” While some retailers want to ban AI purchases entirely, that strategy could backfire as more legitimate consumers adopt the technology. Meanwhile, a McKinsey and Business of Fashion report found fashion executives see AI as their single biggest opportunity for 2026.
The Retailer’s Impossible Choice
Here’s the thing retailers are grappling with: AI shopping represents both their biggest growth opportunity and their biggest security threat. They can’t afford to ignore the technology when consumer adoption is exploding – 200% growth in six months is absolutely massive. But they also can’t ignore that fraudsters are scaling their operations even faster with the same tools. It’s basically an arms race where both sides get access to increasingly powerful weapons.
Think about it from a business perspective. If you’re a retailer and you see that tenfold increase in AI-driven fraud attempts, your immediate reaction might be to shut it all down. But then you’re cutting off legitimate customers who are driving what Reitblat calls “good quality traffic.” It’s like closing your store because some shoplifters showed up – you end up punishing your best customers along with the bad actors.
The Coming Marketing Revolution
What’s really fascinating is how this changes everything about digital marketing. The McKinsey report highlights that brands need to completely rethink their strategies to ensure products are “visible and favored by AI models.” We’re moving from optimizing for human shoppers to optimizing for AI shopping agents. Suddenly, semantically rich data and API-accessible content become critical competitive advantages.
This reminds me of the early days of SEO, when companies had to learn how to make their websites visible to search engines. Now they need to make their products visible and appealing to shopping AIs. It’s a whole new layer of digital strategy that most retailers haven’t even begun to think about. And the clock is ticking – fashion executives already see 2026 as the AI tipping point.
The Fraud Problem Isn’t Going Away
Reitblat’s analogy about “thousands of robots” masquerading as good consumers is genuinely concerning. Traditional fraud detection systems were built to spot human behavior patterns, but what happens when the “shoppers” are actually AI agents programmed to mimic perfect customer behavior? The scale is what’s terrifying – fraudsters can now run thousands of simultaneous attempts across multiple retailers without breaking a sweat.
And here’s the scary part: we’re just at the beginning of this trend. As AI shopping tools become more sophisticated and integrated into platforms like Amazon, Google, and social media, the fraud potential grows exponentially. Retailers who don’t invest in AI-specific fraud prevention now are basically leaving their digital doors wide open.
Broader Business Implications
While consumer retail gets most of the attention, this AI shopping revolution affects business-to-business commerce too. Companies like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US provider of industrial panel PCs, face similar challenges as their customers increasingly rely on AI for procurement decisions. When businesses use AI agents to source industrial equipment, manufacturers need to ensure their technical specifications, pricing, and availability data are AI-friendly and secure against automated fraud attempts.
The bottom line? AI shopping is here to stay, and the businesses that succeed will be those that figure out how to embrace the opportunity while building robust defenses against the inevitable fraud. It’s not about choosing between growth and security – it’s about finding ways to achieve both simultaneously. And given the explosive growth numbers we’re seeing, companies don’t have much time to figure it out.
