Welcome to Week In Review
From new tools transforming creative work, to campaigns reshaped by automation, we track the biggest shifts at the intersection of AI, media, and marketing. This week, Meta unveils Muse – a personal AI agent – the IAB finds consumers want creators in their AI shopping recommendations, and Mastercard predicts one in ten people will routinely shop via agents by 2030.
Top Stories of the Week
Meta Launches Muse, Its First Personal AI Agent
Meta announced the launch of Muse, its first AI agent designed to help people with goals, tasks, and projects across their daily apps. Muse can open a browser, fill out forms, negotiate on a user’s behalf, send emails, book travel, and make purchases via Link – the digital wallet built by Stripe.
Why it matters: So far, AI agents have been largely enterprise or developer tools. Muse serves as a first attempt to put a capable personal agent in the hands of ordinary consumers. When it comes to browsing and shopping, Muse can complete transactions and remember preferences.
Amazon and OpenAI Partner to Bring Amazon DSP Into ChatGPT
Amazon Ads and OpenAI announced this week that select US advertisers can extend their existing Amazon DSP campaigns into ChatGPT. Ads will appear as sponsored text or image units beneath ChatGPT’s organic responses – not inserted into the responses themselves – with Amazon managing campaigns and OpenAI controlling delivery and placement through its own systems.
Why it matters: For OpenAI, the partnership gives its nascent ad business access to Amazon’s enormous advertiser base. For Amazon, it extends its supply-chasing strategy into a channel where products are increasingly being discovered.
IAB: Consumers Want Creators in Their AI Shopping Recommendations
A new IAB study ‘The Creator Signal: How AI Systems Interpret Influence in Commerce’ found that 72 percent of consumers are now using general-purpose AI assistants for shopping-related decisions, with 56 percent preferring AI shopping recommendations that incorporate creator or influencer perspectives.
Why it matters: The research, which surveyed 2200 consumers across the US, UK, Australia, Mexico and India, found that creator trust is driven not by popularity but by authenticity (46 percent), consistency (40 percent), expertise (36 percent), and independence from sponsorship (34 percent) – with the content AI tools draw on to provide recommendations becoming significant marketing real estate.
Quote of the Week
Brands & Agencies
Never Fully Dressed Adopts Persi for Personalised Styling
The UK retailer Never Fully Dressed has adopted Persi, an AI styling and personalisation platform, to deliver more relevant product recommendations and more personalised shopping experiences to customers.
Mastercard Launches Agent Connect for AI Commerce
Mastercard has launched Agent Connect, a new capability designed to let AI agents securely identify themselves and authenticate transactions when shopping on a consumer’s behalf, providing the trust and identity layer that agentic commerce needs to work at scale.
AXA Brings in Publicis Sapient to Scale Global AI Strategy
AXA has appointed Publicis Sapient as a strategic partner to accelerate its global AI transformation, with the brief spanning AI strategy, capability building, and the integration of AI across the company’s customer experience programmes.
M+C Saatchi Launches ‘The Conversation Converter’
M+C Saatchi Talk has launched The Conversation Converter, a new strategic framework designed to help brands generate earned media coverage in AI tools.
Media
Danny Boyle Warns AI Could Kill Risk Impacting Journalism
The film director Danny Boyle, famous for the likes of Trainspotting and Slumdog Millionaire, expressed concern that AI’s encroachment into journalism will erode accuracy needed in newsrooms.
Press Gazette Launches ‘Made by Humans’ AI Detection Tool
Press Gazette has partnered with FlipPay to launch Made by Humans, an AI content detection platform designed to help publishers identify and manage AI-generated content before it reaches publication.
Tech
Klaviyo Goes Headless as It Opens Its CRM to AI Agents
Klaviyo has launched a headless architecture for its CRM platform, allowing AI agents to connect directly to its customer data layer through APIs – enabling agentic workflows to access, action and update customer information without requiring a human to navigate the Klaviyo interface.
Accenture and Google Cloud Form Gemini Group
Accenture and Google Cloud announced the formation of a dedicated Accenture Gemini Enterprise Business Group, to accelerate the deployment of Gemini-powered AI solutions for enterprise clients.
Snap Launches AI-Recommended Ads in Chat
Snap has launched AI-recommended ads inside its chat product, allowing its advertising system to surface relevant sponsored content within messaging conversations.
OpenAI Stops ChatGPT Ads for Rival AI Tools
OpenAI has confirmed it will not run advertising inside ChatGPT for competing AI image and audio generation tools – establishing a clear category exclusion in its advertising policy that prevents rival GenAI companies from using the platform to reach ChatGPT’s user base.
Startup of the Week
Blee, an AI marketing compliance platform that gives companies real-time AI feedback on regulatory and compliance considerations before content goes for review, raised $20 million in a Series A on September 8, co-led by Fin Capital and SMBC Fin Atlas Beyond Fund, with additional backing from Hannah Grey VC and National Bank of Canada.
Number of the Week
The research also found that 36 percent of surveyed teens stated they would happily hand over control to a fully autonomous AI shopping assistant to choose and pay for products on their behalf.
