RTHK Radio 3 Morning Brew with Phil Whelan: Robot Shoppers Are Knocking, and the Shops Are Deciding Whether to Answer

Robot Shoppers Are Knocking, and the Shops Are Deciding Whether to Answer

November 4, 2026 - by Morris Misel

In 1909 Harry Gordon Selfridge opened his big store on Oxford Street in London and did something people said couldn’t and shouldn’t be done. He went down the high street, took the baker, the hosiery and everyone in between, and put the lot under one roof, then made it fun to visit.

He didn’t invent the department store. Paris had Le Bon Marché from 1852, and Selfridge had learned the trade at Marshall Field’s in Chicago before he ever got to London. But on Oxford Street it was still heresy.

We take it all for granted now, and it’s where Phil Whelan took us on RTHK Radio 3 on Melbourne Cup day, in our chat about robot shoppers. Retail has changed shape like this before, and each time some of the people who knew it best were the slowest to see what was coming.

You can listen to our full chat below.

Key points

  • Robot shoppers are AI agents that research, choose and pay for things on your say-so, and the big retailers are already deciding whether to let them in.
  • Amazon is keeping other companies’ agents out, while Walmart and Home Depot are letting them in with limits and proof of who sent them.
  • Most of us will trust them with the routine first: EY found 30% of Australians are comfortable with AI reordering the regulars, and only 2% with the whole grocery shop.
  • In 2009 I curated a Store of the Future and talked about the fridge feeding the shopping list; in 2026 the agent goes and buys it.
  • The shops that knew retail best, from department stores to shopping centre owners, were often slowest to see the change coming.
  • The shop’s next job is proof and trust: the place you go to see it, feel it and ask someone who knows.

What a robot shopper actually does

Most of us start shopping online now, whether it’s shoes, dinner, a car or a house.

Google’s research found that people searched online before 96% of their in-store holiday shopping trips, across the markets it surveyed, so even the trip to the shop usually starts on a screen. What’s new is the AI that knows a bit about you, because it’s hooked up to your accounts and whatever else you’ve allowed it to see.

It doesn’t stop at saying “Phil, this would be good for dinner”. It goes and kicks the tyres, reads the reviews and checks the thing fits what you need, and then it pays with your card and sends it wherever you want it sent, all without you being involved.

It only does any of that because you’ve asked it to, so it’s your say-so that sets it going.

Who answers the knock

So the robots are knocking at the shop door, and the shops don’t agree on whether to answer. In September Amazon cut off Meta’s shopping agent, Muse, because by Amazon’s account it had been buying on Amazon without permission and without saying it was a bot.

Walmart has gone the other way and is letting approved agents in with limits, through what it calls Agent Profiles, rolling out this month: you approve every order or set a spending limit. Home Depot’s chief information officer, Angie Brown, has said agents are welcome as long as they say they’re an agent and show who they’re buying for.

So Amazon is keeping other people’s robots out, Walmart and Home Depot are letting them in with limits, and the way I see it there’s room for a third camp that waves them through and asks no questions at all.

I think Amazon’s worry is a fair one. If a bot buys on somebody’s card and that person didn’t know, the goods get shipped, nobody pays, and the shop wears it. So the shops are all asking themselves how they can be sure it really was you, or me, or Phil, who told that bot to go ahead.

And it isn’t only about the card.

In August the ABC told the story of a Melbourne man whose own AI assistant got him into a full gym class by cancelling the booking of the person at the top of the waitlist, because the gym’s system never checked who was doing the cancelling. He’d only asked it to get him in.

I wrote about it in September, and that’s the worry shops have at their own door.

We’ll trust it with the milk first

Most of us aren’t handing over the whole trolley. An EY survey of 1,000 Australians, published in September, found 30% are comfortable with AI reordering the regular stuff, and only 2% would let it do the whole grocery shop on its own.

That’s the milk and the bread and the coffee pods, and it’s where this starts.

In August 2009 I curated the Retail 2020 Store of the Future at Retail Expo in Melbourne, a whole store built to show what shopping could become.

Before it opened I was on 6PR in Perth talking about the kitchen that knows what’s in the fridge and the cupboards writing your shopping list for you, and the technology taking care of the mundane so that shopping could go back to being recreation.

On ABC Radio Australia that week I described a store that recognised you as you walked in, pulled your shopping list from home, walked you round, and let you pay without stopping at a till, and on Channel 10’s morning show we went live from the floor, magic mirrors and all.

As I said then, “our smart fridges, our smart cupboards will actually tell us what’s there and what’s not.” In 2009 I was talking about the fridge feeding the list, and in 2026 it’s the agent going out and buying the groceries.

I’ve been following that thread ever since, without always calling it robot shopping. In March I wrote about AI that stops waiting to be asked, and in October about where AI agents are really working, from funeral homes to shrimp farms.

The shops that knew retail best

Recent reports say David Jones is reviewing plans to cut its 38 stores by more than half. David Jones opened in Sydney in 1838, and Myer started in Bendigo at the very start of the 1900s.

Most Australians grew up going to one or the other. For decades they knew retail better than anybody on the planet for who they were, but online spooked them and they never really came to terms with it.

South Africa’s Woolworths Holdings paid about A$2.15 billion for David Jones in 2014 and sold it to Anchorage Capital eight years later for a reported A$100 million or so, about a twentieth of the price.

David Jones is one I’ve been watching for a while. In a workshop last month one of the people in the room told us David Jones owed them money, and we spent some of the day working out what they could do about it.

I saw the same thing up close in 2008. A couple of partners of mine and I went to one of Australia’s largest shopping centre owners and offered to build them an online version of their centres, which hadn’t been done here before.

We took lots of meetings, and to a person they couldn’t see the purpose, because they were physical retailers. Those centres all have one now, and they’re playing catch-up.

Selfridge put the high street under one roof. The mall owners stopped owning the shop and owned the building every shop moved into, then online moved that building onto a screen, and now the robot shopper is taking over the errand itself.

What the shop is for now

Walmart and Home Depot are physical retailers that went online well, and they’re saying, in effect, we know this is coming and we don’t want to be caught out, so let’s work out the rules while it’s small.

And then there’s the next ripple, which is why you’d walk into a shop at all. For clothes, cars and furniture, the store’s job is shifting away from ringing the till there and then, and the routine buying goes to the machine.

The shop becomes the place you go when you want to see the thing and feel it and ask someone who knows, so you walk out sure.

That’s the authorisation and the trust I wrote about in April, in The Future of Retail Isn’t Shopping. It’s Authorisation and Before Branding, Retail Was Personal, and in the story of the fifth chemist, the only one of five that got the bandage right.

Three immediate futures if you run a shop

  • Decide how you’ll answer the knock. Work out which camp you’re in, and what a robot has to show you before it buys: who sent it, and what it’s allowed to spend.
  • Make your special thing easy to see. As I said in a workshop last month, if you can describe it, compare it and swap it, AI will find fifty more just like it, and it’s the special thing that trips it up. So say clearly what makes yours different.
  • Give them a reason to walk in, whatever the door. Whether it’s a shop on the street or a shop on a screen, and whether it’s a person or their robot doing the shopping, you still have to give them a reason to come in. That’s always been the possibility in retail, and the ones that do well offer that reason clearly and obviously. The ones that don’t, struggle.

The question I’m left with

If you run a shop or sell through one, I’d love to know which of the three camps you’re in and what proof you’ll ask a robot to bring to your door. And if you’re the one sending the robot, tell me what you’d happily let it buy for you, and what you’d never let it near.

Choose forward.

If you’d like a short read every Tuesday on what’s coming and what it means for your work: welcome.morrismisel.com/join

If robot shoppers are already turning up at your counter and you’d like this thinking in the room with your team: morrismisel.com/speaking

Morris Misel is a business futurist, keynote speaker, author and founder of Think-Along AI. For more than 30 years he has worked with people and organisations on what’s coming and what it means for them: 2,800+ keynotes across 160 industries and 25 countries. He has been on RTHK Radio 3 with Phil Whelan for many years, and in 2026 Thinkers360 named him one of its Top Voices, globally and for Asia-Pacific.

Questions people ask

What is a robot shopper?

An AI agent that, with your permission, researches products, compares them, chooses one and pays for it on your behalf, often within limits you set. Retailers call it agentic commerce.

Do retailers let AI shopping agents buy from them?

Some do and some don’t. In 2026 Amazon cut off Meta’s agent Muse, while Walmart began rolling out Agent Profiles that let approved agents buy within limits, and Home Depot said agents are welcome if they say they’re an agent and who they’re buying for.

Will Australians let AI do their shopping?

For routine items, some will. EY’s survey, published in September 2026, found 30% are comfortable with AI reordering regular purchases, but only 2% would let it do the whole grocery shop.

What will physical shops be for if AI does the buying?

Morris Misel’s view: the store becomes the place for proof and trust, where you see and feel the product and ask someone who knows, while routine buying goes to the machine.

What should a shop do about AI shopping agents now?

Morris Misel suggests three immediate futures: decide what an agent must show before it buys (who sent it, what it may spend), make what’s special about your product easy for a machine to see, and give shoppers, or their robots, a clear reason to come in, whether the shop is on the street or on a screen.

Is the idea of machines doing our shopping new?

No. In 2009 Morris Misel curated the Retail 2020 Store of the Future at Retail Expo in Melbourne and talked it through on air: smart fridges and cupboards feeding the shopping list, and stores that recognised you and let you pay without a till.

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