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

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.