TikTok leans into agentic commerce ‘to take the operational load out of making purchase decisions’
TikTok has launched agentic commerce features as it leans into AI-led consumerism.
The features include a conversational AI shopping assistant and an in-app checkout solution that allows users to buy directly from brands without leaving the TikTok app.
The latter will be available in the US only for now, with a planned global rollout in the coming months.
Users can access the shopping assistant on TikTok Shop product pages and ask the AI chatbot questions about that specific product. The AI is trained to pull information only from the product detail page (PDP), such as product reviews and other basic information. It does not currently offer information on alternative products or suggest product recommendations in response to more general queries.
Importantly, the shopping assistant cannot currently complete transactions on behalf of consumers.
“The way products are discovered is evolving,” Kris Boger, TikTok’s general manager of global business solutions in the UK, told The Media Leader. “We see a huge opportunity to take the operational load out of making purchase decisions.”
Boger stressed that TikTok’s “guiding approach” is to make commerce on the platform “seamless”, shortening the time a user can “go from content to checkout”.
Agentic commerce is reshaping how consumers choose. The UK’s opportunity to lead is now.
That includes keeping users within the TikTok app throughout their consumer journey, however short it may be. With the shopping assistant, Boger said, users will not need to leave TikTok to research a product; they won’t even need to search elsewhere on the platform.
TikTok charges sellers a 9% commission fee for orders on TikTok Shop in the UK. The company is therefore incentivised to make it as easy as possible for consumers to complete transactions within its platform, rather than converting elsewhere online, though Boger said the company is ultimately happy to prove itself a useful part of any consumer journey even if it ends elsewhere.
While Boger stressed the current product slate does not include agentic purchasing and that “we very much see the human as in control”, when asked whether TikTok wants to keep it that way, he responded: “I’ve learned working at this place never to make guarantees around the future of our product direction. I think we see opportunity in using automation as an enabler.”
He continued: “I think there’s still a lot of weight that can be taken out to make it a very seamless thing to buy and discover products online.”
AI-led solutions for advertisers
The social video giant is also releasing several AI-led backend solutions for advertisers. As Boger described, “there’s a lot of headroom to take the load out of campaign setup as well.”
The new features include an AI agent designed for lead generation (also limited to just the US market for now), and new automation features for its Smart+ suite.
The Smart+ features include a creative selection feature that brings together every creative source from a given brand — inclusive of their own assets, AI-generated creative content via TikTok’s Symphony AI product, and branded creator content — into one approval workflow. In addition, Smart+ will power a near-search ads campaign tool that lets advertisers automate search ads to appear to users based on keywords and creative.
TikTok is also making its TikTok for Business Model Context Protocol (MCP) available across several additional AI platforms, allowing marketers to connect TikTok for Business to Anthropic’s Claude, the IAB Tech Lab Agent Registry, Perplexity, Kimi, Manus, Replit, Snowflake, and Tencent WorkBuddy.
The company is also expanding its automated ad solution for TikTok Shop, GMV Max Pro, to factor in key business costs, including affiliate commissions, coupons and referral fees. The aim is to offer advertisers a truer understanding of their return on ad spend (ROAS) on TikTok, taking into account both costs and sales conversions.
For Boger, proving business outcomes against a given brand’s investment in the platform is core to advertisers increasingly viewing TikTok as a “profit centre” for their business, rather than a marketing cost to be managed.