Why your Amazon order confirmation emails have become so unhelpful

Over the last year or so, tech companies have asked consumers to imagine a world where an AI “agent” is doing their bidding for them, including spending their money. Google, with a catalog of billions of products in Shopping, is perhaps best situated to make that vision a reality, and indeed has already introduced a slew of shopping features powered by AI. Gemini Spark can mine a user’s email for crumbs of information to, for example, build custom vacation itineraries, pulling in data like concert ticket confirmations and biographical details about family. In May Google unveiled a shopping cart that works across various merchants that would eventually be integrated into Gmail as well, meaning shoppers could add things to their cart while reading their inbox or watching YouTube. How helpful an AI agent can be depends on how much personal information a user is willing to fork over.