Customers and pedestrians transfer via the Pitt Avenue Mall throughout a Black Friday sale on Nov. 28, 2025 in Sydney, Australia.
Lisa Maree Williams | Getty Pictures
The emergence of AI procuring would not simply give customers entry to personalised recommendation and hassle-free procuring, it additionally brings with it an elevated danger of digital fraud.
This Black Friday, for the primary time, customers and retailers alike are being warned in regards to the perils of so-called “agentic procuring,” as customers flip to massive language fashions to seek for merchandise, examine choices, obtain personalised suggestions, and even make purchases with out a lot human enter. These technological advances include their very own dangers.
“It undoubtedly makes my life simpler… however on the identical time, it additionally makes fraudsters’ life considerably simpler as effectively,” mentioned Michael Reitblat, CEO of Forter, an id intelligence firm that works on fraud prevention.
Based on Reitblat, there was a 200% enhance in agentic procuring by customers over the previous six months. That has been accompanied by an almost tenfold enhance in fraudsters utilizing AI. “Consider it as sending hundreds of robots into completely different shops to masquerade pretty much as good customers,” Reitblat instructed CNBC’s “Squawk Field Europe.”
Whereas some retailers’ knee-jerk response has been to easily ban AI purchases, that might be a defective technique as increasingly more customers use AI for procuring and that’s driving good high quality site visitors, Reitblat mentioned.
A report by McKinsey & Firm and The Enterprise of Trend discovered that amongst vogue executives, AI and digital instruments have been seen as the one greatest alternative for the business in 2026. To make sure merchandise are seen and favored by AI fashions, manufacturers should rethink advertising and marketing and e-commerce methods, the report famous, including that semantically wealthy knowledge and API-accessible content material will probably be vital to success.
“It is advisable to use AI to battle AI,” Reitblat mentioned. “It is advisable to just be sure you’re leveraging higher knowledge than fraudsters might have, and you’ll want to correctly consider: how do you authenticate the customers?”
Shaky client confidence
Worth-conscious customers is one other issue retailers should take care of this 12 months as heightened commerce tensions and worries a few slowing economic system influence customers’ spending habits.
Shopper confidence has been shaky heading into the procuring season. In Europe, financial sentiment has remained stubbornly beneath its long-term common since mid-2022, in line with knowledge by the European Fee. In the meantime within the U.S., client confidence hit its lowest level since April in November as considerations about job safety mount.
Some consultants have steered a cut up between rich customers doing effectively and others which might be reducing again on spending amid stress from increased costs, in what has been dubbed the “Ok-shaped economic system.”
“Shopper confidence has been bumpy, and subsequently the purchasers feeling like they’re getting real worth goes to be an enormous factor for this 12 months,” mentioned Curry‘s Chief Providers Officer Dean Kramer.
“We all know analysis is an enormous a part of how customers method Black Friday, ensuring they’re getting absolute worth.”
