Agentic Shopping

Do you give an AI the house key or the car key?

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“Just log in with my password.”

Would you ever say that to a stranger helping you with your groceries? Probably not. Your password is the key to your digital home. You don’t just hand it out.

Yet, this is exactly the question we face now that AI assistants are starting to help us with online shopping. How do we give such a smart ‘agent’ the ability to buy something for us, without giving it the keys to our entire account?

Fortunately, the answer has been a standard in the tech world for years, and it’s based on a very relatable idea.

The smart valet

Imagine you arrive at a fancy restaurant and let a valet park your car. You give them your car key, but it’s not just any key. It’s a special valet key.

What can that key do? Start the car and open the doors. What can that key not do? Open the trunk, unlock the glove compartment, or make a new key.

You give the valet just enough permission to do their job, and not an inch more. And when you leave, the key is yours again. This principle of limited, temporary access is the core of a secure digital world.

It works the same way for your webshop

This ‘valet key’ method is called OAuth 2.0 in the digital world. It works exactly the same:

  1. You are the owner of the car (your account).
  2. The AI assistant is the valet. It wants to perform a task for you.
  3. Your webshop is the restaurant. It wants to make sure everything happens securely.

When the AI assistant wants to buy something, it briefly sends you to the webshop itself. There, you log in securely, in your own trusted environment. Then, the webshop asks: “The AI assistant would like to place an order for you. Is that okay?”

When you click ‘yes’, you give the assistant a digital ‘valet key’ (an access token). With it, it can only complete that one order. It cannot change your address, view your order history, or change your password.

Why this is the only right way

This approach is not just a neat trick; it’s the only way to build trust for the future of AI shopping.

  • You always stay in control. You can revoke the assistant’s ‘key’ at any time.
  • The risk is minimal. If something ever goes wrong with the assistant, the damage is limited to that one, temporary key.
  • It builds trust. Customers will only use an AI assistant with peace of mind if they know their data is safe.

So, the question is not if you should secure your webshop for AI, but how. And the answer is clear: never give them the house key, only the car key for the specific job they need to do.

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