So you can spend more time wrapping your gift haul and less time stressing

Spooky season is in full swing, but so is the dreaded holiday creep. Halloween die-hards will hardly have time to put out their fake cobwebs and oversized skeletons before it’s time to start shopping for gifts this year, with retailers including Target, Amazon, and Walmart releasing holiday deals as soon as early October. These brands are among the many who are using AI — either by building their own agents or partnering with existing products — to turn Black Friday and Cyber Monday into lengthier shopping sprees. Small businesses get a boost from AI, too.  Etsy is beginning to use agentic technology to  provide direction to gift-givers looking for something special and to boost small businesses’ success. 

And it doesn’t stop there. As Napster noted last year, “traffic from AI-powered tools to retail sites surged 670% on Cyber Monday alone.” What’s more, in a new report, Adobe Analytics  predicts that in 2026, the AI traffic to U.S. retail sites will rise by 130% year over year. AI is simply ingrained in the consumer experience now, and that’s going to be evident this fall as shoppers gear up to purchase piles of gifts. 

It’s a new era, to be sure, but it’s a promising one for overwhelmed shoppers looking to be unburdened from the most tedious parts of the experience. It’s also an opportunity unlike any other retailers have had during previous years; AI agents are able to provide customers with groundbreaking service, meaning companies will see higher conversion rates and total order values. And when customers are happy, they come back; loyalty is a great gift, especially during the holidays. 

Customers and companies ‍both benefit from this experience.

Napster CEO John Acunto said at the HumanX Amsterdam conference last week that this is the kind of personal touch companies need right now. Until recently, online shopping experiences have been clumsy experiences, with shoppers fumbling through a retailer’s site, sometimes with no luck. 

But, as Acunto detailed to the business leaders in attendance at HumanX, it doesn’t have to be that way. “I’m certain part of your company’s mission statement is the following thing: ‘We care about our customers, we love our customers, our customers are everything to our business.’ So, imagine if your website had this agent that could actually talk to every customer who visits their website and qualify them.” 

With a chat feature, customers are able to explain in more detail exactly what they’re looking for. When they pass off more information, the shopping assistant is able to offer more personalized recommendations. It’s an easy trade: Customers can be more specific in their conversation with the agent, and in turn, businesses can deliver the right product faster and the first time. 

Technology is about one thing: “reduced friction. Period,” Acunto said. “Imagine where you can just have this agent having this conversation with your customers, instantly surface the page that you need, immediately deliver that into the cart, and make that happen.”

Stop drowning in open tabs.

It’s easy for customers to go down the endless rabbit hole of comparison shopping, only to have more tabs open than they ever thought possible. They suddenly forget what they were even looking for and abandon the mission altogether for weeks, only to have to rush-order something “good enough.” But a shopping agent can pull from the entire customer catalog,  incorporating all customer reviews and eliminating the legwork for customers. 

Let’s say someone is looking for the perfect tent and accessories for their most outdoors-y family member. They want to get them something quality, but they don’t want to break the bank over one gift. They could manually search Bass Pro Shop, REI, and Sierra Trading Post  for the best-reviewed, budget-friendly four-person dome tent, temperature-rated sleeping bags and inflatable sleeping pads, and easy-to-pack camping pillows. 

Or, they can list what they need  to an AI agent that’s built to find the best deals that match their preferences. Products like Napster Agent can make this a zero-click experience for shoppers, too, by navigating the website for them with real-time responses to help customers create a little holiday magic.

“It’s about having a conversation not where you, as this user or this customer, have to go on this search journey to find things,” Acunto said at HumanX. “You’re having a conversation, and this agent is controlling the website and controlling the conversation. … And if you imagine that this agent now knows your history, knows what you like, is learning about you, then the customer journey and experience isn’t you trying to search through pages and 10 different things.” 

‍Get actual human-like help during a busy time.

When shoppers’  gift lists are as long as they are  during the holiday season, you could really use  some help. As easy as it sounds to hire a personal shopper, that’s not exactly practical for someone on a budget. Now, customers have someone who will let them describe conversationally what they are looking for and give them actual, practical advice (at no additional cost). 

Conversational agents have now evolved from simply overseeing a transaction to being able to take a plain-language prompt and deliver on it. For example, a shopper can say, “I want to make a cozy care package for my sister who’s pregnant and needs to relax this winter.” That ask isn’t as simple as providing the assistant with a list of specific things; it’s a more emotional prompt. “Cozy” and “needs to relax” are not things someone can purchase; they are words that come from a place of care. The AI needs to plug into the human needs of someone who needs comfort, and from there, it will make the suggestion that will feel personal and thoughtful.

This is a more complex prompt, so the agent needs to understand all of the nuances within it. A specific agent that is an expert shopper will know that the customer needs pregnancy-friendly items and account for the special relationship with the recipient. It will understand that this is a sibling buying for their sister, so this gift can’t be generic. And with this built-in agentic AI, it won’t be. And the business will get the credit for delivering one-of-a-kind, memorable items to its patrons.

In the past, holiday shopping season would have more aptly been called “spooky season” with the amount of anxiety it conjured. And as doorbusters crawl further and further up the calendar, there’s even more pressure to buy and for individual businesses to deliver always-on deals. But with the help of agentic AI, everyone can take a deep breath and still get their wish list sorted out.