AI-first Commerce Initiative
Defining the Next Era of Commerce
Artificial intelligence is changing how people discover products, compare alternatives, evaluate trust, and decide what to buy.
Commerce is moving beyond websites, search engines, marketplaces, and traditional recommendation systems toward a new environment in which AI actively participates in the buying process.
The AI-first Commerce Initiative examines this transformation and helps build a shared language, research foundation, and public-interest framework for understanding it.
Read the Definition -> What is AI-First Commerce?
[Coming soon!] Explore Research and Publications
Research Agenda
The AI-first Commerce Initiative explores several connected areas.
Defining AI-first Commerce
Developing shared concepts, terminology, boundaries, and models for the emerging field.
AI-mediated Consumer Behaviour
Examining how AI changes discovery, comparison, trust, loyalty, decision-making, and purchasing.
AI Discoverability
Studying how organizations and products become visible and understandable to AI systems.
Trust and Recommendation
Exploring the evidence, signals, incentives, and reasoning that influence AI recommendations.
Organizational AI Readiness
Identifying the capabilities organizations need to participate effectively and responsibly.
Competition and Market Structure
Investigating how AI intermediaries may affect visibility, pricing, bargaining power, and access to customers.
Consumer Rights and Human Agency
Examining transparency, consent, autonomy, privacy, accountability, and meaningful control.
Autonomous Transactions
Exploring environments in which AI systems negotiate, purchase, subscribe, or manage services.
Standards and Interoperability
Considering the shared structures and rules needed for interaction between buyers, businesses, platforms, and AI agents.
Futures and Scenarios
Developing alternative scenarios for how AI-first Commerce may evolve and how different choices could shape its outcomes.
Help Shape the Conversation
AI-first Commerce is still emerging.
Its technologies, standards, commercial models, and social expectations are not yet settled.
The choices made now will influence:
- how people make decisions;
- how businesses compete;
- how trust is established;
- how recommendations are governed;
- and how much control individuals retain.
The initiative invites critical engagement with this transformation. If you are interested, please email us at ai-first@fuman.org to get started.
Our Public Interest Commitment
The AI-first Commerce Initiative is guided by FUMAN’s public-interest policy, which sets out the principles governing its research, education, publications, partnerships, and future development. The policy ensures that the initiative remains independent, transparent, evidence-based, and focused on public benefit, human agency, fair participation, and responsible innovation.
Read the policy → Fuman’s AI-first Commerce Public-Interest Policy
Copyright & Licensing
Our work and publications are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, unless otherwise noted.