Anthropic launches AI agent blueprints for retailers ahead of holiday shopping season 

NEW YORK, Sept 2 — Artificial intelligence company ​Anthropic is giving retailers blueprints to build shopping and merchant agents on Claude, ‌it announced on Wednesday, as demand for internal and external ⁠conversational search tools ​expands ahead of the ⁠holiday shopping season.

• Shoppers are increasingly using ‌AI to ‌compare prices, check product availability and get ⁠recommendations.

• AI-driven retail site ⁠visits now convert at a 60% higher rate than traffic from other sources, Adobe Analytics said last month.

• The blueprints are guidelines for building shopper and merchant agents ‌for retail, travel and ​ticketing companies. Online agents can make preference-based suggestions and add items to shopping carts for customers.

• "We've seen encouraging results — cart size up about 30–35% for one partner, and customers [are] about 60% more likely to complete a ​purchase," said Angela Jiang, Anthropic's head of ‌product on ‌its ⁠Claude platform.

• Retailers can use the merchant blueprint to build an agent that makes suggestions on inventory, prices and marketing campaigns. It does ‌not complete purchases ​on behalf of shoppers ‌or merchants, Anthropic ⁠said.

(Reporting ​by Arriana McLymore in New York; editing by David ​Gaffen)

Related topics