With the busy holiday shopping season coming up, millions of people are using AI chatbots to get quick product suggestions and price information.
Adobe expects AI-driven visits to US retail sites to jump by 130 percent this year, leading to a record $275.1 billion in online sales. But using AI to plan your holiday spending comes with a big risk: chatbots often make up prices.
A recent Adobe survey found that 77 percent of shoppers trust advice from AI. However, a new study by Product.ai shows a different side.
Researchers tested the same shopping questions on ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. They found that 86 percent of the answers had pricing mistakes. For the answers they could check, the typical error was $300.
This problem often starts with the retailers. BeSeenByAI reviewed 1,101 pricing pages and found that 32.8 percent of websites hide their prices from AI tools. Sometimes this happens on purpose, or it could be due to complicated website design. Either way, these hidden prices make AI guess.
When asked for prices on sites without visible price tags, AI chatbots still gave an answer 78.5 percent of the time. Instead of saying they didn’t know, the chatbots used old information from review sites, copied competitor prices, or just made up numbers.
Ben Pines, Co-Founder and CMO of BeSeenByAI, warned that shoppers need to be careful as Black Friday gets closer.
“Before trusting the number, ask the chatbot where it came from,” Pines advised. “Then click through and check the price on the brand’s own pricing page. If you can’t find it there, don’t trust it. LLMs can invent prices or take them from competitors.”
Pines also said that retailers are responsible and urged brands to fix their websites so AI tools can read their official pricing pages. Until these changes happen, the price you see may depend on which chatbot you ask.