Artificial intelligence “agents” are supposed to be more than chatbots. The tech industry has spent months pitching AI personal assistants that know what you want and can do real work on your behalf.
At this point, they're not really making much of an impact.
Visa aims to transform this by providing access through your credit card. Establish a budget along with some preferences, and these AI agents – descendants of ChatGPT and similar chatbots – might locate and purchase items for you such as a sweater, regular groceries, or even an airline ticket.
“We think this could be really important,” said Jack Forestell, Visa’s chief product and strategy officer, in an interview. “Transformational, on the order of magnitude of the advent of e-commerce itself.”
Visa announced Wednesday it is partnering with a group of leading AI chatbot developers — among them U.S. companies Anthropic, Microsoft, OpenAI and Perplexity, and France’s Mistral — to connect their AI systems to Visa’s payments network. Visa is also working with IBM, online payment company Stripe and phone-maker Samsung on the initiative. Pilot projects begin Wednesday, ahead of more widespread usage expected next year.
The payment processing firm based in San Francisco is wagering that technology which currently appears cutting-edge might evolve into a handy substitute for routine shopping activities in the not-too-distant future. Over the last half-year, they have been collaborating with artificial intelligence programmers to tackle various technological hurdles that need to be surmounted prior to widespread adoption by typical consumers.
For emerging AI companies, Visa’s backing could also boost their chances of competing with tech giants Amazon and Google, which dominate digital commerce and are developing their own AI agents.
The tech industry is already full of demonstrations of the capabilities of what it calls agentic AI, though few are yet found in the real world. Most are still refashioned versions of large language models — the generative AI technology behind chatbots that can write emails, summarize documents or help people code. Trained on huge troves of data , they can scour the internet and bring back recommendations for things to buy, but they have a harder time going beyond that.
“The early incarnations of agent-based commerce are starting to do a really good job on the shopping and discovery dimension of the problem, but they are having tremendous trouble on payments,” Forestell said. “You get to this point where the agents literally just turn it back around and say, ‘OK, you go buy it.’
Visa views itself as playing a crucial part in enabling AI entities to gain smoother and more reliable access to the funds required for their transactions.
The issue with payments isn't one that AI platforms can address on their own," Forestell stated. "This is why we began collaborating with them.
The latest AI program was launched almost a year following Visa's announcement. revealed major changes Regarding how credit and debit cards will function in the U.S., leading toward a future where physical cards and their 16-digit numbers become less significant.
A growing number of consumers have become accustomed to using digital payment platforms like Apple Pay, which transform smartphones into virtual credit cards. In an analogous manner, verifying individuals' digital identities could enable AI representatives to act on customers’ behalfs. According to Forestell, this needs to ensure confidence among purchasers, financial institutions, and retailers that these exchanges are valid, with Visa managing any potential disagreements.
Forestell mentioned that this doesn't imply AI agents will dominate the whole shopping process, but they could be helpful with tasks that may seem tedious to certain individuals—such as purchasing groceries, home improvement supplies, or even compiling Christmas wishlists—or activities that tend to be complex, such as making travel arrangements. In these scenarios, some folks might prefer an agent capable of "simplifying things" by handling all actions autonomously on their behalf, according to Forestell.
Other shopping experiences, like those for high-end items, serve as forms of entertainment, and numerous customers prefer engaging with various options and making comparisons, according to Forestell. He believes that in this scenario, AI assistants would continue to provide support without being too intrusive.
What about credit card debt? According to data from the Federal Reserve of New York, American consumers accumulated over $1.21 trillion in credit card balances by the end of last year.
Forestell believes that customers will provide their AI assistants explicit spending constraints and criteria, which should reassure them that humans remain in charge. Initially, these AI assistants may check back with purchasers to ensure they approve of buying a particular plane ticket. Gradually, however, such agents could gain greater independence to "allocate up to $1,500 for travel between points A and B," as he noted.
Part of what is attracting some AI developers to the Visa partnership is that, with a customer’s consent, an AI agent can also tap into a lot of data about past credit card purchases.
Visa can enable a user to agree to let us access their ongoing stream of transaction data," explained Dmitry Shevelenko, Perplexity’s top business executive. "So when we provide recommendations—like if someone asks about 'the best laptops'—we will be aware of your past purchases and the preferences they reveal.
Perplexity’s chatbot can already book hotels and make other purchases, but it’s still in the early stages of AI commerce, Shevelenko says. The San Francisco startup has also, along with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, told a federal court it would consider buying Google’s internet browser, Chrome, if the U.S. forces a breakup of the tech giant in a pending antitrust case .
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