Can AI shopping assistants close sales like a human expert? Our test shows they can, and how! Perplexity leads the pack, delivering expert-level, contextually nuanced product knowledge while ChatGPT impresses. Amazon's Rufus and Google Gemini trail behind. As shopping shifts from keywords to conversations, brands must adapt or risk invisibility in the AI-mediated future.

We tested AI shopping agents from Amazon and Perplexity to see how they fare helping prepare a family for Iceland's famously fickle Laugavegur Trek. Our quick takeaway? Highly capable LLMs such as Perplexity have the clear upper hand over bots like Rufus, at least for the moment, in providing expert-level guidance for complex purchasing, even if Perplexity's buy flow remains a tad glitchy. 

Agentic ecommerce moves beyond recommendation algorithms to focus on what the buyer is actually looking for.