Don’t blame Target for a bad AI shopping experience
The harshest rule in retail used to be, “You break it, you bought it.” Now Target is telling customers that even if you buy it accidentally via AI, you own it.
An article on Business Insider recently noted an update in Target’s terms and conditions in advance of a planned integration with Google’s Gemini, which can recommend purchases to shoppers.
Here are the details:
The new terms and conditions say that if a customer authorizes an AI shopping agent to act on their behalf, those purchases and transactions would be “considered transactions authorized by you.” In other words, the customer would still have to pay, even if, let’s say, the bot ordered the wrong item.
Before storming Target headquarters, it’s worth spending a bit of time on that “if.” Currently Gemini does use agentic AI to buy anything without human approval first.
That may eventually come as more tech companies explore the potential of agentic commerce, in which AI would theoretically learn your tastes and needs in order to make purchases autonomously.
A Target for lawsuits?
You can probably imagine the conversation that went on among Target’s legal team as the AI plans were announced. These T&Cs are about getting in front of potential liability issues before they emerge.
The company said customers can still bring back items under its standard return policies. You just can’t point the finger at its AI features and sue the retailer if you’re not happy with a purchase.
The problem is that brands are responsible for the experiences they deliver, including self-service capabilities based on AI.
If a customer looked up an item online and found old, outdated product pages and somehow got to place an order anyway, surely that would be the retailer’s fault.
The same would be true if a retail employee provided false information or overcharged a customer.
Expectations are informed by education
Target also does not guarantee that third-party AI tools “will act exactly as you intend in all circumstances,” the BI article noted.
That blanket statement is another attempt to dodge legal risks, but it raises another question: shouldn’t brands do more to educate customers about their AI tools in order to manage their expectations?
Too often they seem to be rolling out tools and hoping consumers will have a basic sense of their power and limitations based on their use of ChatGPT.
Consumers may appreciate brands like Target offering them AI to enhance shopping experiences, but they will also rightly demand a degree of accountability and ownership in addressing errors.
And while the updated T&Cs protect Target, there’s no avoiding potentially negative word of mouth and customer churn based on AI-assisted purchases that go awry.
This is an issue that will affect all retailers, but Target has an opportunity to demonstrate better leadership here. Don’t point AI at customers unless you’re ready to be there for them when it fails to hit the bullseye.
