Ron Johnson, the executive who pioneered Apple's retail store concept, doesn't buy Silicon Valley's vision of AI-powered shopping. While companies like Google and OpenAI pour billions into agentic commerce — AI systems that browse, compare, and checkout on your behalf — Johnson believes the industry is overestimating how much of shopping people will delegate to machines.
"AI is a new technology that will improve the online shopping experience," Johnson said. "But I don't know that it's going to change which way we shop." His perspective carries weight: he joined Apple in 2000 to build its retail business just as online shopping was taking off, and created a store network that became central to Apple's customer strategy.
Google is pushing its Universal Commerce Protocol, a standard for AI agents to take consumers from product discovery to checkout. OpenAI is turning ChatGPT into a shopping destination. But Johnson argues that buying a laptop, for example, is too personal to delegate: "Honestly, nobody's going to do that." Buyers want to feel the weight, see the display, decide on the size.
The tension captures a broader question in AI: just because an agent can automate a task doesn't mean users want it automated. Some purchases are experiential, not transactional — and no chatbot can replicate walking into a store.
