I’ve been reading a lot lately about how to get products into AI answers: make the catalogue machine-readable, win a recommendation, show up when someone asks an agent what to buy. Useful. Also incomplete.
What keeps coming back, from running a store and from looking at what actually converts, is simpler: human sales still pay the bills.
Agents are excellent at drafting, researching, chasing status and keeping a board tidy. They are not excellent at owning a relationship, reading a room or closing a pipeline. Marketing that only targets agents, or only optimises for what an AI might cite, skips the work that still moves money: trust, authenticity, customer relationships, and offers designed around how people actually buy.
And where buying by agents actually is, for now, still looks early and small.
Elon Musk asked Grok Bot to research LEGO Star Wars kits for young kids and order them. A few days later he posted that the sets had arrived, and then that SpaceX would make you whole if the bot got it wrong or leaked a card. It’s a vivid demo. It is not yet a channel with known volume.
On the other side, Amazon looks less open. There are user reports of “unauthorized AI agent” language in its Conditions of Use (I haven’t audited the full policy myself). Musk has said he’ll buy elsewhere and later wondered aloud about starting a competitor to Amazon. Amazon’s own public statement about agent browsing, aimed at Perplexity’s Comet, is here. That statement is about Perplexity; I’m not reading a Grok-named press release into it.
Shopify, meanwhile, has opened Shop Pay checkout to MCP-compatible agents: search the catalogue, build a cart, and complete checkout after the shopper confirms. So agents can buy in more places. Permission and trust still decide whether they may.
Most of the “AI customers” I still see, including at our business, are referrals. A person asked an agent, saw the best-matching options, then chose. The agent did not replace the relationship. Quality and appealing images, copy that provides value and solves genuine problems, and reviews or authenticity info that establish trust, still influence the decision to complete the transaction.
Practically, keep the catalogue clear. Google’s own guidance on AI features in Search is that you do not need special optimisation beyond good SEO: clear structure, honest descriptions, FAQs, schema that matches the page. The one useful addition I’ve landed on is almost embarrassingly small: a short plain-language line at the top of the product page saying exactly what the product does, before any marketing copy. Machines like that. So do tired humans.
So the working rule for now: treat AI discovery as an extra shelf, not the shop. Agents can buy, but trust and platform permission decide whether they may. Keep the catalogue clean enough that an agent can find you. Keep spending the harder hours on people: the ones who still decide, still trust, and still pay. Human sales still pay the bills.
Further reading
- Shopify: Shop MCP and Shop Pay checkout for agents
- Google: AI features and Search (no special optimisation beyond good SEO)
- Amazon statement on Perplexity Comet
