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Your AI wants to go shopping. Bring a list.

The holiday shopping season is warming up, and so are the AI assistants. In the space of a week, Google started rolling out a shopping cart that follows you from Search to the Gemini app, and OpenAI took ChatGPT’s ads to 26 more countries. If you ask a chatbot “what should I buy?” this year, it helps to know who else is in the conversation.Mekat Monday By the Mekat team

The Good

Google calls it Universal Cart, and on October 15 it started rolling out in the U.S. across Google Search and the Gemini app. Google first previewed it earlier this year. The idea is simple: one cart for things you find while shopping on Google, even if they come from different stores.

Here’s what Google says it does:

  • Saves your progress. Save a handbag while browsing in AI Mode, add a sweater later in the Gemini app, and Google says your products are waiting in the cart when you come back.
  • Watches prices for you. The cart works in the background and sends notifications when a price drops or an item comes back in stock. It leans on Google’s Shopping Graph, which Google says has more than 60 billion continually refreshed product listings.
  • Helps with payment. It’s built on Google Wallet, so Google says it understands your card perks. It also shows relevant promo codes right in the cart.
  • Checks out. With many stores you can pay with Google Pay inside the cart in a few taps; otherwise you move your items to the store’s own cart and finish on its site. Google’s examples include Nike, Sephora, Target, Ulta Beauty, Walmart, Wayfair and many Shopify merchants.

One detail worth knowing: Google says the stores remain the seller of record, and your order confirmations and customer support come from them. So if the sweater arrives in the wrong shade of “oatmeal”, you talk to the store, not the cart.

How to use it well:

  1. Add the thing you actually want, not the thing the internet wants you to want.
  2. Let the price alerts do the waiting. Patience is free, and now it sends notifications.
  3. Before you pay, check the store name on the order. Then you know who to call if something goes wrong.

Robots that remember your shopping list and tell you when socks go on sale. The future is here, and it smells faintly of fabric softener.

The Bad

On October 21, OpenAI announced that ChatGPT Ads are expanding to 26 more countries, for a total of 89. OpenAI says more than 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns since ads launched just over eight months ago.

OpenAI’s pitch to businesses is that ads reach people “as they explore, compare and decide what to buy.” Its own example: someone planning meals for their first marathon might see an ad for a grocery delivery service. That’s the deal. You’re chatting about your life, and somewhere nearby, a business would like a word.

To be fair to OpenAI, here’s what it promises:

  • Ads appear only on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro and Enterprise stay ad-free.
  • Ads are clearly labeled and kept separate from ChatGPT’s answers.
  • Advertising does not influence the answers ChatGPT gives.
  • Conversations are kept private from advertisers, and OpenAI says it does not sell customer data.

Those are OpenAI’s claims, and they’re good ones to hold it to. The annoyance is human, not technical: a labeled ad sitting right under a helpful answer still borrows a bit of that answer’s trust. Our brains are quick, but they skim, especially on a phone at 11 p.m.

How to handle it:

  1. Look for the label. Treat anything marked as an ad the way you’d treat a billboard: maybe useful, definitely paid for.
  2. Ask for your own shortlist first. “Give me three options in my budget and what each one is bad at” keeps you in charge of the comparison.
  3. Open the store’s own page and read the price, the return policy and the shipping costs there before you buy.

Chatbots can now help you decide what to buy and show you ads while you decide. Somewhere, a 1950s TV host is nodding with approval.

The Ugly

Whatever shiny tool you shop with, the oldest trick still works: the deal that’s too good, served up in an ad. The FTC put it bluntly in a recent consumer alert: social media platforms don’t always thoroughly vet the ads you see or the advertisers behind them.

The FTC says anyone can pay to place ads in your feed, including scammers who impersonate real brands or sell knock-offs. According to the FTC, people reported losing more than 95 million dollars in 2025 to scams that started when they ordered something after seeing an ad on social media. Because a lot of people don’t report scams, the FTC says the real losses are likely much higher.

The classic example from the FTC’s alert: a designer bag in your feed, 50% off, limited time only. Your thumb is already moving. Pause it.

How to protect yourself, straight from the FTC’s advice:

  1. Check the company before you buy. Search its name plus “scam” or “complaint”.
  2. Remember that ads can be targeted using your online activity. Review the privacy and ad settings in your browser, phone and apps.
  3. If you spot a fake ad, or lose money to one, report it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

For more red flags, see our guide on how to spot AI scams.

Scout’s take

Let the AI do the boring part, like tracking prices and remembering the list. Keep the deciding part for yourself: who’s selling, what’s an ad and whether the deal is real.

Want to get confident with AI tools before the big shopping weekends? Try a free mini lesson on mekat.ai. See you next Monday.

Sources

Published by Mekat, Martinez Solutions LLC, Glendale, Arizona. Every factual claim is checked against the sources above before publishing. Spotted a mistake? support@mekat.ai