Season 5 - Episode 43: AI found your product - But is it worth choosing?
AI is changing how we shop, from the way we discover products to how we compare options and make purchasing decisions. Instead of knowing exactly what to search for, customers can increasingly describe what they need and let AI help them find a solution.
For businesses, the shift is just as significant. AI makes it possible to produce content, analyse data, optimise campaigns and automate processes at a scale that previously required much larger teams.
But when more businesses gain access to the same capabilities, what actually makes one worth choosing?
In this episode of Simply Briefed, Kristine Lium speaks with Bengt Wessborg, founder of Ghostar and one of the initiators behind AI BAREN, about how AI is reshaping eCommerce and why the things that are hardest to automate may become the most valuable.
Key topics in this episode
How AI is changing product discovery and purchasing
What agentic commerce actually looks like today
How businesses can produce and optimise more with fewer resources
Why customer relationships, community and brand are becoming more valuable
What makes a business worth choosing when AI makes it easier to be found
Episode 43: AI found your product - But is it worth choosing?
– With Bengt Wessborg, founder of Ghostar and one of the initiators behind AI BAREN.
This week’s episode
If everyone can access the same AI capabilities, what makes one business worth choosing over another?
For decades, online shopping has followed a familiar pattern. Customers search for products, compare alternatives and navigate between websites before making a purchase.
AI is beginning to change that experience.
Customers can increasingly explain what they need rather than search for a specific product. AI can help evaluate options, recommend solutions and, in some cases, even complete transactions.
At the same time, businesses have access to tools that make it easier to produce, automate and optimise almost every part of their operations.
The opportunities are significant, but they also create a new competitive question: if everyone can do more with less, where does real differentiation come from?
From searching to being recommended
One of the first changes is happening before the purchase itself.
More customers are using AI to discover products, compare alternatives and make decisions. This means that businesses need to think differently about how their products become visible.
Traditionally, much of eCommerce discovery has revolved around search engines, advertising and website navigation. But when customers increasingly ask an AI assistant for recommendations, the information available about a product becomes essential.
Product descriptions, availability, specifications and delivery options all help AI understand whether an offer is relevant.
For sellers, the question is no longer only how to attract visitors to their websites. It is also how to become part of the answers customers receive before they ever arrive.
Doing more with less
AI is also changing what eCommerce businesses can produce.
Tasks that once required significant time and resources, such as translating product descriptions, adapting creative content for different channels, developing websites and analysing campaign performance, are becoming easier to automate.
This creates opportunities for smaller businesses to operate with capabilities that previously required much larger organisations.
But there is another side to this development.
When producing content and testing variations becomes easier, competitors can also increase their output dramatically. More capability does not automatically translate into a lasting advantage.
The easier something becomes to automate and reproduce, the harder it may be to differentiate through that capability alone.
Super digital, super human
One of Bengt's strongest perspectives is that becoming more digital does not have to mean becoming less human.
In fact, greater efficiency can create opportunities to invest more in the parts of a business that are difficult to automate.
Customer service, relationships, community and physical experiences are not necessarily competing with digital innovation. They can become more important because technology frees up resources to develop them.
Instead of using every efficiency gain to produce more content or automate another task, businesses can invest in experiences that create genuine connections with customers.
That may mean more personal customer service, stronger communities or opportunities for people to engage with a brand beyond the moment of purchase.
The point is not to choose between technology and human interaction, but to understand how they can strengthen each other.
From relevance to preference
AI can help customers find products that match very specific needs.
Someone preparing for a sailing trip, for example, may need equipment that is suitable for the conditions and available before departure. AI can help identify relevant products based on those requirements.
But being relevant in that moment is not necessarily the same as being preferred.
A customer may discover a business because its product meets an immediate need. Choosing that business over another can also depend on familiarity, trust and previous experiences.
This is where Bengt challenges the idea that businesses should focus exclusively on being discoverable through AI.
If the relationship only begins when someone is ready to buy, the business may already be competing against many similar alternatives.
Building preference can begin long before that moment.
Start somewhere, learn and raise the bar
The episode also offers a practical reminder: businesses do not need to automate everything at once.
Start with something manageable. Experiment, learn from the results and identify where AI can make a meaningful difference.
Repetitive tasks and work that is easy to copy may be good places to begin. The time and resources saved can then be directed towards activities that create more distinctive value.
Just because something can be automated does not mean it always should be. The important thing is to make deliberate decisions about where AI belongs and where human contribution matters most.
As AI continues to reshape eCommerce, becoming technically capable may increasingly be a requirement rather than a differentiator.
The bigger opportunity may lie in combining those capabilities with something customers genuinely value.
Because being found is only the beginning.
The real question is what makes someone choose you.
🎧 Listen now on Spotify!
Host: Kristine Lium
About the guest
Name: Bengt Wessborg
Title: Founder of Ghostar and PixPax, and co-initiator of AI BAREN.
Background: Bengt Wessborg is an entrepreneur, AI expert and eCommerce specialist with more than 25 years of experience across digital commerce, innovation and business development.
He is the founder of Ghostar, an agency focused on generative AI and AI transformation, and PixPax, which uses AI to rethink how companies produce product imagery, video and digital content.
Bengt has been part of the digital transformation of Swedish commerce since the early days of the internet and is passionate about making new technology understandable, useful and commercially relevant.
Today, he helps companies explore and apply AI across areas such as smarter customer experiences, agentic commerce, new business models and new ways of working.
👉 Listen to the full episode of Simply Briefed to explore how AI is changing eCommerce, why becoming discoverable is only part of the challenge and what businesses can do to become worth choosing.
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