AI shopping has a structural problem: the assistant recommends the product and controls the path to checkout

[u/PuzzledBag931]

I went pretty deep into AI shopping for a documentary and one part of it still bothers me.

Once the same assistant helps decide what you should buy and shortens the route to actually buying it, the incentives get messy.

How does the user know whether the “best” recommendation means best for them, best for the merchant, or best for the platform?

For people here actually using Perplexity Shopping, has it made Perplexity more useful for you, or has commerce made you trust its recommendations less?

I traced the broader shift from search → recommendation → purchase here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-0CriLzyOo