AI bots can shop for you. But should we trust them?

Hi, I'm David Rigen, host of CBC's award-winning investigative true crime podcast, Someone Know Something. Each season I investigated different unsolved case. From a Canadian woman's disappearance in Costa Rica, to a mysterious man's confession 15 years after an Ontario teen vanished. The New York Times calls SKS a consistently rigorous and intelligent gem, and the Guardian raves that you'll hang on every word. Find someone knows something wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. The rise of streaming TV has turned half of all Canadians into court cutters, but streamers are now jacking up prices. So what's a budget conscious movie lover to do on a Saturday night? Huh? There's always a meth gator. This ain't no one ever gait him. Get a 50 pounds of meth and it's 30 feet long. Here's gotta be domiculous to get here. You may not always be in the mood to watch a 30-foot long drug-soaked alligator terrorize the Everglades, but at least the price is right. Hi, I'm Fall Havershrewd. Welcome to the cost of living. Streaming promised all the movies in TV you could want for cheap. But now you're getting less and paying more. That's where free streaming services like Tubi and Plex come in. And of course, meth gator. Also today, the old 99 cent pricing trick. Cause yeah, we're really gonna buy something because it's $2.99 and not $3. Well, actually, we did. For years. But are we still? Up first, would you let an AI computer program book your summer vacation or buy your groceries? If you said no, that feels like a bridge too far. A lot of people would probably agree. But if I ask you that two years from now, do you think your answer will still be the same? [Music] Rhea Karam, whereas a lot of hats. She runs a small theater in Toronto. She's a computer scientist. She's writing a book. She hosts a radio show. All that means a lot of my time is spent reading through hundreds of emails, deciphering which ones I need to respond to. What each one is like. Well, a lot of her time used to be spent on email. Now she's taken back that time with a little help from AI. She's set up an automated assistant. And now every day all day, it cleans up her inbox. So I would say, you know, if this is an inquiry for the theater, send them to the information page. If it's a date inquiry, add it to my calendar. And then I decide when it's going to notify me or not. An email sorting robot personal assistant is an example of something called "agentic AI." Just like a real estate agent works on your behalf, "agentic AI" is an AI agent that does stuff for you. What this is is an assistant that can take care of tasks that are medial, that are repetitive, and that don't necessarily require a great deal of decision-making power to enact them. You know how you ask chat GPT a question and it comes back with an answer? "Agentic AI" is like that. Except if the chat bot was a real go-getter, instead of just giving you an answer, it can also make a plan on its own and take action. So an example, say you're a sneakerhead and you're looking for a certain shoe. So you can create your agent to constantly monitor. You want it to go everywhere and you want it to run it for a period of time. You've set your price. I don't want to pay more than this for it. It finds it and if you trust it, then it can go purchase the shoe. It can put your address into the account if you've given it access. And then it can be shipped to your place and it can monitor the shipping. And then when you know, purillator says it's coming, then it can send you a notification to your phone to say it's on the way. Maria calls this a really basic use of "Agentic AI". Now she is a computer scientist, but she says any of us can go on an AI platform, like chat GPT or Claude, right now and create our own agent in no time flat. As it happens, I told her I am looking for a certain basketball shoe. Kobe 9. I just typed that in while we were chatting. And it doesn't look like there's a lot of sales on these running shoes. They're about $200. Okay, so it's not a retail miracle worker, but Maria says, we have all been searching the internet for years. So these are just like one tiny step beyond. Is it a tiny step or is it more like a giant leap from mankind? [Music] When the world first got online in the 90s, the first generation of the internet, Web 1.0, was kind of like thumbing through a brochure. You'd click on a link, go to a webpage, read it, then social media came along and voila, Web 2.0. We were interacting with each other, sharing pictures and videos. Now AI means we could be seeing the start of a new internet. The Agentec Web. Vast Bedner is the head of the Canadian Shield Institute for Public Policy. She's been looking at what AI agents could mean for, among other things, how we shop. Who knows if it's going to catch on? Like turns out, people like the activity of shopping, right? They can be very satisfying to kind of find that perfect couch cushion or, you know, gift for a loved one and that may not be an activity that we're rushing to outsource. How we shop has already changed dramatically in the last 20 years. The promise of even shopping online was kind of incredible, right? Because it does save people time. If you're not driving around to stores, looking at the prices on the shelf, right? Doing your own comparison shopping. That's a time intensive activity. Online shopping has saved us time, but AI agents could take things to another level. Look at Maria. Her little robot helper saved her hours a week just on her emails. She could use them to get her groceries to find her a flight and hotel from Toronto to Vancouver and then go and book it. All the time that she and all of us spend doing that kind of stuff, AI agents could steal that time back for us. Instead of researching the best running shoe, we could be playing with the kids, doing laundry, reading. But there is a catch. We would have to trust the AI agent enough to let it do all that. And this is where the brave new world of agentic commerce runs into a big question. Who do AI agents actually work for? Can that agent consistently and legitimately act and transact in the best interest of the person commanding it? Or will it naturally be kind of programmed or predisposed to satisfying advertising interests that nudge you towards the more expensive running shoes? Are the robots looking out for us? Or are they in it to make money for Google or Anthropic? Or whoever owns the platform? An AI agent doesn't have the same fiduciary duty to look out for our best interests as a real live human agent. If we ask it to find the lowest airfare, can we trust that's what we're getting? Or could the AI agent be the ultimate middleman, raking in dough by sending us to this airline? Instead of that one. A lot of what is problematic and challenging about online shopping right now just sort of gets amplified in an agentic context. So when you go to search on Amazon and Amazon self-preferences, the products that they make, right? Through an agentic tool the very same thing could happen. Or in our kind of trade war or geopolitical context, if we're using American technology, will only American products be recommended? Even if you're not super techy, you're not vibe-coding an AI agent to do your grocery shopping. Agentic commerce could be tough to escape. Google, for example, is changing the way it searches the internet. Now when we Google, it has more AI agents working in the background. They're also already rolling out stuff like agentic booking for travel to super users in the US. And more agents are on the way. Here's a stat. 57% of the traffic on the internet already comes from AI bots. So when we ask a question and a chat bot scours the internet for us, all the web traffic that generates means more bots are now visiting web pages than humans. We don't need an AI agent. a AI girlfriend to already be in a relationship with the Agentec Web. We go to AI with very personal questions about our kids, our finances, our health. Vass Bedner says it's worth asking how that information could be used. Could a chapbot sort of almost emotionally manipulate us or sort of know about our contacts? Like Vass has really stressed out. She hasn't slept a lot. Maybe she's pre-mensural or a pyramid appausal or a little bit of both. And what does the agent want me to buy a big chocolate bar? She might actually want a big chocolate bar. But how much can she trust the recommendation? Could the AI steer her towards Cadbury instead of parties? And if that happens over and over to enough people, what could it mean for the smaller candy bar maker? Vass thinks all this steering to this product, or that one, means AI could ultimately shrink the marketplace. That could mean fewer choices for all of us, less competition, and maybe higher prices. The really bad timeline is that Agentec is the only way to shop, and Agentec is not a thriving competitive marketplace with interesting alternatives. Agentec is a concentrated market that self-preferences the products of the largest players and satisfies advertisers, which is kind of what we've seen with a lot of online shopping now. But things don't have to go that way. Agentec commerce is still in the early days. That says there is time for regulators to come up with rules, like requiring AI agents to look out for us the same way as human agents. That would make sure they're working for us, and not just figuring out how to get money out of us. If that happens, she can see a future where Agentec commerce really is our body. It could find us great deals. It'd be like extreme coup-onting with the robots doing the clipping. I'm open to instances of this working really, really well and being extremely powerful for consumer choice and driving down prices and giving people way more information than they could ever have before. That's the best version of this. Maria Karem, who's an early adopter of AI agents, hopes we do get the best version of the Agentec web. Because-- Let's be honest, you can't get away from an agent right now. If you even go to a Google search or a search on duck-duck-go or any of the engines that you use, they're already forcing these agents down your throat. So you don't really have a choice anymore. Aromies of AI agents could soon be scouring the web, booking our travel, finding us running shoes. But we'll trust them. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] This is the cost of living. Listen to us on CBC Radio 1 or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Paul Havershude. $4.99 instead of $5. Oh, $0.99. We see you one of the oldest tricks in the book. But now after decades of one penny less than a round number, Jenny DeRoseo finds retailers have a new trick up their sleeve. [MUSIC PLAYING] Cassandra Marks' house is busy. She's got five kids. They have a bunch of friends. And they're always hungry. The one kid likes to come and eat cereal at my house all the time. So someone's always eating something here. Cassandra lives in Windsor in Essex County. She spends a lot of time shopping for groceries. Probably at least four or five days out of the week. So I'm going to multiple stores in one day. Cassandra, she's a deal hunter. So she pays close attention to prices. And lately, she's noticed a shift. And I actually noticed it out Walmart first. Because they were changing a lot of the prices on their kids clothing. They're under wear and socks. Some of their adult clothing all to rounded numbers instead of that, 99. More and more retailers like Walmart and Loblaws are ditching the 99 set price tags and rounding up instead. It's a big shift. Ending price tags with 99 cents has been around for decades. It's known as charm pricing. And it's supposed to make the price look lower than it really is. The theories is that in Western world, we tend to read from left to right. And so that when it comes to things like prices, we probably don't pay as much attention to the final digits. Jean-Pierre du Bay is a professor of marketing at the University of Chicago. He says this strategy has worked on consumers for a long time. But it's charm. Maybe wearing off. When you see these two prices, what do you go for? So this is $3.99 and $4. They're both $4. They're both $4 because there's no pennies anymore. Would you say that if it works on you, like you think it's a little bit less money? Absolutely not. Jean-Pierre says these days, consumers aren't in the mood for pricing shenanigans. We're dealing with inflation, shrinkflation, dynamic pricing. Just give us the goods straight up. If there's one place where I've seen pretty systematically consistent results, it's been on consumer surveys since about 2024 with very strong demands and stated preference to see more price transparency. In a sea of $99 and pricing, two dollars can send a message. This is the price. And it's a good one. Trust us. (upbeat music) And there's another benefit. A price tag that reads two bucks instead of a dollar $99 makes it easier for shoppers to add stuff up. Right, I'm not having to do all this brain gymnastics. Now it's just three for 10 straight four. Shaka Jane is with the global consulting firm, Simon Kutcher. She says this kind of pricing is also good for retailers because all those pennies add up to profits. If they round up the price from $3.44 to $3.50, now I've captured the extra six cents on every item that I'm selling. And the consumer doesn't really see a difference there. But Shaka says, "Charm pricing isn't going anywhere." The $99.00 deal still has power over us because. The consumer is irrational and pricing, even though it's a number, is emotional. (upbeat music) Cassandra Marks hopes rounded pricing sticks around. She says it makes grocery math a lot easier when all the prices end in 98 cents. I'm always just rounding up to the nearest number because I'm trying to figure out the fastest way to add things. I'm doing a lot of the math in my head. I'm really good at math. And she doesn't have time for more math. She barely has time to bring her groceries in. Like I have two watermelons in my car right now because I'm not the man yet. For the cost of living, I'm Jenny DeRosio. It's been said that being neighbors with America is like sleeping with an elephant. One gets affected by every twitch and grunt. Well, these days there's a lot more than twitches and grunts in dealing with the US. I'm Paul Hunter. And I'm Katie Simpson. - We're reporters here in Washington and every Wednesday will bring you a smart conversation to help you make sense of how American politics are affecting Canada. - Our new podcast is called Two Blocks From The White House. Find and follow now wherever you get your podcasts, including YouTube. - On your radio and by podcast, this is the cost of living. I'm Paul Hevershood. Stop me if this sounds like you. Ted Lasso's coming back on Apple, but I don't have that. We need Netflix, the office is my comfort watch. The bear is on Disney Plus, that's supposed to be good. Nick Logan, does this sound familiar? - A little too familiar, really. I've got all those and Amazon Prime. - What is that running on month? - Those and my cable internet package were talking nearly 200 bucks a month. - But court cutting was supposed to be cheap, right? - Right? Someone told me that once upon a time. But if you're fed up with paying, there's actually a whole other streaming universe out there where everything is free. You may have seen the names pop up when you're googling a show or movie you want to watch or maybe you've seen their apps pop up on your smart TV. We're talking about 2B, Pluto TV, Plex, just to name some of the big ones. - Well, I have actually dabbled in Plex. - So you're a little bit of a Plexitarian? - I suppose. - Well, a lot of people have tried some of these platforms out and their numbers are growing all the time. Like take 2B, for example, it's become a real juggernaut in the free streaming game. And its audience has roughly tripled in the last five years. - That is huge growth. How are they pulling that off? - Well, like think of it as a cross between Netflix and cable TV. For starters, they've got movies on demand, not necessarily first run movies, but they've got big catalogs of old stuff. Everything from classic movies like Moonstruck to the classically cheesy. Allow me to introduce you to a couple of things. to the meth gator. I'm not sure I want to be introduced to meth gator. Look, that may not be for everyone, but you know, more people are meth gator curious than you might think. Like Bo Levitt, he's a cinephile who watches a lot of movies and a few years ago, he really got into watching the obscure stuff on TV. It was just straight up forget my carers and watch a trashy action movie from the Philippines or something like that. And that trashy movie he's talking about is called RoboWarts from the late 1980s. I like to think I know a high art and that's sir. Sounds like high art. Everything's in the eye of the beholder, my friend, but there are some real gems on there. Their bread and butter, though, is untapped markets, Bollywood movies, Black Cinema, and they deliberately appeal the fandoms, horror, sci-fi, anime. Those are kind of niche fandoms as you say, but when you add them all up, there are a lot of people in there. Absolutely. And the other part of the formula is streaming television, what's known as fast channels, not fast as in quick, but fast as in free ad supported television. They're available online and they show reruns of old sitcoms and dramas, even sports replays 24 hours a day. Medio de la Dimae is a media studies researcher at University de Maria. When you open your screen, you go on the fast channel, Baywatch fast channel. And there it is. It's two o'clock and then a new episode starts. And then there's another one. So you enter this flow. So if you just have to watch the hoff sprint down the beach and rescue someone, you're covered here. And let's not forget national treasure Pamela Anderson. But the TV studios have been sitting on decades worth of old shows like that that people love. And they just realized they could monetize it. They could create some channels that were not connected to cable that were not normal TV channels. So using the internet, knowing the fact that people are not cutting the cable. And as she points out about half of Canadians no longer subscribe to cable. Half. I mean, that is a lot. And it is, I suppose, a big group of people that can be monetized as she says, how are they doing that? Well, they're making money the old school way like TV advertising. So you can watch their movies on demand and stream shows, but you've got to sit through the commercial breaks. Okay. So what's old is new again. We are back to TV with commercials, which Nick feels just maybe a ditch ironic given the original promise of streaming was, hey, no ads. Yeah, that was the promise from Netflix and the gang in the beginning, but there goes into 20 bucks from my bank account. But it used to be more like eight bucks, right? Like streamers have been getting, shall we say, a bit loose with their price. And then unless you pay more, those streamers are charging you for a monthly fee and making you sit through the ads. This is all making free options like to be or Pluto TV, look a lot more peelings of viewers. David Offenberg teaches at Loyola, Marymount University in Los Angeles. And he specializes in entertainment finance. What we learned from piracy is that consumers really like free. And a lot of people see the ads as a fair trade off like Bo Levitt back when he was watching a lot of to be the ads didn't really bother him that much. Yeah, if I really wanted to immerse myself in a good movie, I would have found the ads annoying. Whereas with to be, yeah, if I'm watching some low-budget predator rip off, the fact that I had to sit through some ads every now and again wasn't really all that troublesome, especially since it was so he's kind of like, Hey, I get what I pay for. Totally. And if you just want to watch something mindless after work or when you put the kids the bed, you're not wasting any money. But David says that doesn't mean you're not paying something. We are giving up our money in exchange for our time. So if you are willing to spend the time watching commercials, then yes, streaming is free. And people are more willing to pay with their time. David says people are less concerned about watching ads if they can watch content for cheap or better yet for nothing, especially younger people. Why that group in particular? Well, they're the YouTube generation. And YouTube is kind of a model for the likes of Toobie and the others. It's no coincidence that the audience for these platforms skews younger. I spoke with Toobie's new general manager in Canada gave Lindo. We're finding that our audience is majority, you know, Gen Z, Millennial. These are, you know, people who have never subscribed to cable mostly or certainly don't subscribe to it now. So they didn't grow up paying for cable and maybe, hey, they don't even really like paying for streamers. They're used to free content and they're finding it in places like Flex and Toobie. But the other thing is you don't have to sign up for anything. You don't have to create an account to watch them. Which David Offenberg says opens the gate for a lot more people. For so many consumers that one step of typing in their credit card number is such a barrier. And so that's really helped boost the fast services and let them become as big and as successful as they are today. How big and successful are we talking about here? Like what are their numbers like? I mean, it's not as big as the big guys. Netflix says it has more than 300 million subscribers worldwide. Toobie is catching up. It says it has about 100 million users monthly. So it's a third the size of Netflix. Those are serious viewer numbers. Yeah. And they're part of a bigger streaming strategy for some of the Hollywood studios. Paramount Skydance owns Pluto TV, Fox owns Toobie, and Fox just bought one of Toobie's rivals, Roku, for $22 billion US. Okay. So the big entertainment companies they are invested quite literally in free TV. But do you have any sense of what their long game might be here? Like are they trying to hook people with free and then start charging later on? We've seen some of that already. NBC Universal's streaming service peacock. It started out as a free service. It's now charging for a subscription. Even Plex has started to charge for some premium features. So I guess we'll have to tune in to see. But for now, at least free streaming. Still pretty free. Yeah, we're kind of in a golden age of free TV. Who knows how long it will last, but right now you have everything from three's company reruns to our favorite meth gator right at your fingertips. So what more could you ask for Paul? I mean, all you can say is, hey, come and knock at our door. Nick, yeah, we've been waiting for you. Where the kisses are hers and hers and his please company. Hey, thanks, Nick. Thanks, Paul. That's all for the show. The cost of living is based in Calgary. The show is produced by Daniel Nerman, Jenny DeRosio and Jennifer Keane, with help from Jeff Kinock. Oh, and if you have a minute, you're listening, you have a chance to throw us a review. We'd really appreciate it. Also, five stars. Smash that like button, baby. I'm Paul Havishrood. Thanks for listening. [Music] For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca/podcasts.