The AI Economy: What Consumers Expect From AI Agents

IN THIS ISSUE: Salesforce is shedding light on a crucial truth: AI agents aren’t just transforming businesses—they’re also reshaping consumer experiences. New research from the enterprise tech firm reveals four distinct consumer personas based on expectations of AI bots. The key takeaway for companies? AI is just as impactful for consumers as it is for businesses, and ignoring it could be a costly mistake.

Also, why are OpenAI and Perplexity possibly eyeing Google’s Chrome browser? Dive into what’s driving this strategic interest and what it could mean for the future of AI and search.

The Prompt

When it comes to AI agents, most of the conversation has centered around enterprise and B2B use cases. But consumer interest is growing—and it’s too big to ignore. New research from Salesforce reveals that everyday users are just as eager to engage with AI agents, not just for productivity, but also for personalized support in their daily lives. The study identifies four key consumer personas that businesses should consider when designing AI agents: the Smarty Pants, the Minimalist, the Life-Hacker, and the Tastemaker.

“The narrative around AI, including agentic AI, has been somewhat asymmetric in nature,” Vala Afshar, Salesforce’s chief digital evangelist, tells me. “[There’s] a lot of discussions around business efficiency and optimization, and how business leaders are looking to implement predictive, generative, agentic, or even physical AI—the various waves of innovation we’ve experienced over the last several years—and not enough focus on our customers, our consumers, business-to-business buyers, how folks are using this technology…AI agents are transformative for consumers as they are for businesses.”

In a survey of 2,552 U.S. consumers, Salesforce is offering compelling insights that organizations can use to inform their product development and marketing personas when creating AI agents.

What Motivates You to Use an Agent?

“Consumers remind us that…the experience that a company provides is as important as its products or services,” Afshar declares. And with AI agents delivering more personalized, proactive, and conversational experiences, those expectations are only growing. “I suspect as we continue to do these surveys, we’re going to find out that the experience could be a make or break for a brand or a company, and to understand how people want to use this technology.”

One of the standout findings from the report is that 65 percent of respondents expressed interest in tools that help them make better decisions and simplify their lives. But although the desire for the AI is there, are they equally as comfortable with the technology?

Here’s what we know about the four personas:

The Smarty Pants

The persona most respondents identified with (43 percent), so-called “smarty pants” love being well-informed and prefer an AI agent that provides a detailed, well-presented analysis of options to help them make confident and strategic decisions.

The Minimalist

Less than a quarter of respondents fall into this category (22 percent). It’s also the group that is mainly made up of consumers who identify as Generation X or Baby Boomers (64%). They are not as familiar with AI, but want agents to help them with decision-making and handle tasks—anything to create a low-stress approach to life.

The Life-Hacker

This persona is someone who is comfortable with AI tools and wants an agent to improve their efficiency, help with multitasking, and serve as a personal assistant. Sixteen percent of survey users fall into this category. They want to make the smartest, most efficient decisions possible.

The Tastemaker

This final persona is primarily composed of Gen Z and millennial consumers. They want bots to provide them with personalized and curated recommendations for their lives, from picking out shows to watch to places to eat, products to buy, and more. Fifteen percent of respondents said they’re a tastemaker.

▶️ Read more about Salesforce’s consumer AI persona report (My Two Cents)

▶️ You can find out which persona you are by taking this quiz.

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OpenAI and Perplexity Could Buy Chrome to Take On Google

After the US v. Google case found that the tech company held an illegal monopoly on search, all eyes are on the three-week hearing that could determine the penalties Google will face. One possible consequence is having to sell off its popular Chrome browser. And waiting in the wings are two potential bidders: OpenAI and Perplexity.

Representatives from both AI companies testified this week that they’re open to acquiring a browser as a way to bring more competition to the search landscape. Buying Chrome would come with a hefty price tag—DuckDuckGo’s CEO, Gabriel Weinberg, testified that the browser could cost up to $50 billion.

The purchase of Chrome may seem out of place at first, but by owning a browser, OpenAI or Perplexity would be able to control the AI experience for millions of people who use Chrome to access the internet. It’s not without precedent, as Microsoft’s Copilot powers the company’s Edge browser. Having a dedicated browser allows OpenAI or Perplexity access to browsing history, interaction patterns, and real-time signals for intent and personalization. All of this will help generate relevant search results.

Perplexity has already moved beyond its website to the edge. It formed a partnership with Motorola, in which its AI capabilities will be included in the phone maker’s “Moto AI” software suite, rivaling Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant, and Samsung’s Bixby. 

With AI companies seemingly on the verge of consuming the entire internet, they need to identify new sources to help train their products. Owning a browser could present an opportunity filled with an abundance of data.

It would also deal a significant blow to one of their biggest rivals, Google. Acquiring Chrome would remove a critical advantage from Google’s arsenal and offer a powerful counter to its dominance in search—even if the move risks Google losing control of its own browser. In reality, there would be more ways to access Google’s AI products, either through the web, its software, or mobile operating system.

Of course, all of this hinges on a federal judge ordering Google to divest Chrome, and that the decision holds up on appeal. If Google ultimately wins the case, the scenario becomes moot.

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This Week’s AI News

🏭 AI Trends and Industry Impact

• Microsoft: Companies are going AI-first, turning to digital labor to scale (My Two Cents)
• The great AI upskilling disconnect—and how to fix it (ZDNET)
• Anthropic warns fully AI employees are a year away (Axios)
• I became an AI prompt engineer after a layoff from Meta: Now I’m “on the cutting edge of the newest tech obsession” (CNBC)

🤖 AI Models and Technologies

• Google succeeds with LLMs while Meta and OpenAI stumble (IEEE Spectrum)
• Anthropic launches program to study AI “model welfare” (TechCrunch)
• AI is spreading old stereotypes to new languages and cultures (Wired)
• Google Gemini has 350 million monthly active users, according to internal data (The Information)
• Baidu offers new AI models—Ernie 4.5 Turbo and X1 Turbo—with enhanced features, lower cost than DeepSeek’s products (South China Morning Post)
• ServiceNow expands AI ambitions with new Apriel small language model (My Two Cents)
• Nvidia announces general availability of NeMo tools for building AI agents (Silicon Angle)
• Anthropic analyzed 700,000 Claude conversations and found its AI has a moral code of its own (VentureBeat)
• OpenAI rolls out “lightweight” version of its ChatGPT deep research tool (TechCrunch)
• Small language models are the new rage, researchers say (Wired)
• Character AI unveils AvatarFX to make images into lifelike chatbots (Silicon Angle)
• Amazon Web Services’ SWE-PolyBench can expose the dirty secret about your AI coding assistant (VentureBeat)

✏️ Generative AI and Content Creation

• Microsoft pushes into human-agent collaboration era with latest Microsoft 365 Copilot upgrades (My Two Cents)
• Google’s AI Overviews reach 1.5 billion monthly users (Search Engine Journal)
• Windsurf slashes prices as competition with Cursor heats up (TechCrunch)
• Adobe and Figma are getting ChatGPT’s upgraded image generation model (The Verge)
• OpenAI makes ChatGPT’s image generation available as API (VentureBeat)
• Generative AI is reshaping South Korea’s webcomic industry (MIT Technology Review)

💰 Funding and Investments

• Here are 19 U.S. AI startups that have raised $100 million or more in 2025 (TechCrunch)
• Endor Labs, which builds tools to scan AI-generated code for vulnerabilities, lands $93 million (TechCrunch)
• Vibe coding helps Supabase nab $200 million at a $2 billion valuation seven months after its last raise (TechCrunch)
• Ex-Meta engineer raises $14 million to help home services unlock call center revenue with AI (TechCrunch)

☁️ Enterprise AI Solutions

• Dropbox Dash gets smarter with multimedia search and AI that moves work forward (My Two Cents)
• Google adds more AI tools to its Workspace productivity apps (VentureBeat)
• HubSpot acquires Dashworks to power up Breeze’s search and content tools (My Two Cents)
• Docker to streamline and secure AI software delivery through containerization (Silicon Angle)
• SWiRL: The business case for AI that thinks like your best problem-solver (VentureBeat)

⚙️ Hardware, Robotics, and Autonomous Systems

• Perplexity enters the smartphone market with Motorola partnership (CNBC)
• Tesla begins “FSD Supervised” ride-hail tests with employees in Austin and the San Francisco Bay Area (TechCrunch)
• The future of AI and robotics is being led by Amazon’s next-gen warehouses (IEEE Spectrum)
• Amazon and Nvidia say AI data center demand isn’t slowing down (CNBC)
• Study: Building a leading AI data center could cost $200 billion within the next six years (TechCrunch)
• AI-powered robot dog is learning to “live” like a human (Mashable)

💼 Business, Marketing, Media, and Consumer Applications

• Microsoft’s big AI hire can’t match OpenAI (Newcomer)
• The Washington Post inks OpenAI licensing deal for ChatGPT search (Variety)
• Imogen Heap launches AI music tools with AI platform Jen (The Hollywood Reporter)
• Adaptive Computer wants to reinvent the PC with “vibe” coding for non-programmers (TechCrunch)
• Why brands and agencies are putting AI chiefs in their C-Suites (Digiday)
• Using generative AI will “neither help nor harm the chances of achieving” Oscar nominations (Engadget)
• Carnegie Mellon staffed a fake company with AI agents. It was a total disaster (Business Insider)

🛒 Retail and Commerce

• Shopify is reportedly hiring ChatGPT to be your personal shopper (TechRadar)

⚖️ Legal, Regulatory, and Ethical Issues

• Ziff Davis, the publisher of PCMag and Mashable, sues OpenAI, accusing the AI company of copyright infringement (The New York Times)
• Adobe wants to create a robots.txt-styled indicator for images used in AI training (TechCrunch)
• How AI is redrawing the legal map (The Venture Lens)

💥 Disruption, Misinformation, and Risks

• Brazil’s AI-powered social security app is wrongly rejecting claims (Rest of World)
• U.S. officials claim DeepSeek’s AI app is “designed to spy on Americans” (TechRepublic)
• Google’s AI Overviews feature credible-sounding explanations for completely made-up idioms (Wired)
• As AI manufacturing grows, so does the tech’s environmental damage (Mashable)
• How AI is reshaping wildlife conservation—for better or worse (The Verge)
• Even the U.S. government says AI requires massive amounts of water (404 Media)
• This “college protester” isn’t real. It’s an AI-powered undercover bot for cops (Wired)

🔎 Opinions, Analysis, and Editorials

• The long road to agentic AI—hype vs. enterprise reality (Silicon Angle)
• AI tools mostly fumble basic financial tasks, study finds (The Washington Post)
• The great AI lock-in has begun (The Atlantic)
• AI as normal technology: an alternative to the vision of AI as a potential superintelligence (Knight First Amendment Institute)

Featured Image: Salesforce has identified four types of people based on what they want out of AI agents. Image credit: Ken Yeung/Adobe Firefly

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End Output

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