Millions of shoppers are turning to AI chatbots for product suggestions and price information as the busy holiday season approaches. A new study, however, warns that the prices these tools give are often wrong.
Adobe expects AI-driven visits to US retail sites to rise 130 percent this year, contributing to a record $275.1 billion in online sales. Its recent survey found that 77 percent of shoppers trust advice from AI, though a separate study by Product.ai paints a different picture.
Study finds frequent pricing errors in chatbot answers
Product.ai researchers put the same shopping questions to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity. They found that 86 percent of the answers contained pricing mistakes. For the answers that could be checked, the typical error was $300.
Hidden retail prices push chatbots to guess
The problem often starts with retailers. BeSeenByAI reviewed 1,101 pricing pages and found that 32.8 percent hide their prices from AI tools, either deliberately or because of complicated website design. Where prices were not visible, chatbots still gave an answer 78.5 percent of the time.
Rather than admitting they did not know, the chatbots relied on old information from review sites, copied competitor prices or simply made up numbers.
Shoppers urged to verify prices before buying
Ben Pines, Co-Founder and CMO of BeSeenByAI, warned shoppers to be careful as Black Friday approaches. “Before trusting the number, ask the chatbot where it came from,” Pines advised.
He told shoppers to check the brand’s own pricing page and to distrust any figure they cannot find there. Pines also said retailers are responsible and urged brands to fix their websites so AI tools can read their official pricing pages. Until that happens, the price shoppers see may depend on which chatbot they ask.
