The Financial Post reports in its Saturday edition that start-ups including Perplexity and OpenAI, as well as tech giants such as Google, want the tools to be the first port of call for purchasing goods, making AI-powered chatbot platforms the new storefronts of on-line shopping. A Financial Times dispatch to the Post says that the advent of agentic artificial intelligence threatens an on-line retail ecosystem that has cost billions of dollars of investment to create. Control over customer relationships and data troves that have been built up over decades could be partially ceded to intermediaries. Replacing human eyeballs with digital ones risks undercutting lucrative "retail media" businesses, whereby retailers sell enhanced positioning in search results and advertising banners to vendors in a global industry that research group WARC estimates is worth nearly $200-billion (U.S.) a year. In addition, handing over personal data to shopping bots could invite fraud, experts warn, and shoppers could be led astray by cleverly designed website code. There is also a risk that shoppers will choose not to outsource what for many is an enjoyable pastime, in the same way that they have not abandoned shopping in physical stores.