The Transparency Paradox: Rebuilding Trust in AI Shopping Agents Through Explainability

Title

The Transparency Paradox: Rebuilding Trust in AI Shopping Agents Through Explainability

Creator

Bansal, Prakul; Bansal, Reenu

Description

AI shopping agent systems that search, compare, negotiate, and purchase on a consumers behalf promise to reduce friction in digital commerce, but they also intensify long-standing concerns about price discrimination, manipulative choice architecture, and opaque data use. This chapter argues that the resulting transparency paradox is not merely a communication problem: the same AI capabilities that enable personalization can also conceal and optimize exploitation. Building on research in trust, explainable artificial intelligence, humanAI interaction, and consumer protection, the chapter develops a socio-technical approach to rebuilding trust in agentic commerce. It synthesizes regulatory and standards developments and proposes design and governance mechanisms layered explanations, contestable outcomes, auditability, and choice-integrity controls intended to make AI shopping agents intelligible and accountable across jurisdictions and market contexts. Copyright 2026, IGI Global Scientific Publishing.

Source

Reshaping E-Commerce Through AI Shopping Agents;pp.375-406

Date

01-01-2026

Publisher

IGI Global Scientific Publishing

Coverage

Bansal P., Christ University, India; Bansal R., Christ University, India

Rights

Restricted Access; Hardcopy may be available in the library

Relation

ISBN: 979-833737332-4; 979-833737330-0; 979-833737331-7;

Format

online

Language

English

Type

Book chapter

Identifier

https://doi.org/10.4018/979-8-3373-7330-0.ch013

https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105039724506?origin=resultslist