As artificial intelligence tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google Gemini become everyday shopping companions, a growing number of consumers are proactively setting brand preferences within these chatbots a shift that could dramatically reshape how brands build and maintain loyalty.
According to a new report titled “The Preference Economy” from the Gale agency, the rise of agentic AI — systems capable of independently identifying products, searching online, and even completing purchases — presents significant challenges for marketers. Instead of direct interactions, consumers are increasingly delegating brand decisions to large language models (LLMs), potentially reducing traditional touchpoints and making loyalty harder to secure.
The findings are striking: 56% of surveyed consumers are now comfortable delegating all their communications with a brand to AI, while nearly one-third have already instructed AI assistants to prioritize certain brands over others.
“That’s pretty alarming,” said Gale CEO Andrew Noel. “They’re saying, ‘I will trust the [large-language model] to be my filter between me and a brand.’”
The report, based on a survey of 3,000 consumers in the U.S. and U.K., paints a future where AI-savvy users architect much of their commercial lives through AI. Roughly a quarter of respondents plan to regularly set brand preferences with AI within the next year. Noel predicts this figure could surge to 60–70% within two to three years, as more consumers instruct their AI agents to only engage with a handful of preferred brands.
“You’re looking at 60% to 70%, in the next two to three years, [who] are going to instruct the LLMs to set their preferences, meaning I only want to really talk to these four or five [brands] because I prefer them,” Noel said. “If you’re brand side and you think about the technical implications of that, I think you’ve got a lot to think about.”
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Loyalty Programs Face Growing Indifference
This AI-driven shift compounds existing challenges in the loyalty space. On average, consumers belong to four to six loyalty programs, yet many are “ghost members” who rarely engage. Millennials and Gen Z emerge as the most active yet demanding cohorts. They prioritize seamless experiences and are quick to switch brands 61% of those aged 25–34 have abandoned a brand for a competitor offering a superior loyalty experience, even when the rewards were inferior.
“The expectations that millennials and Gen Z have, in particular when they interact with brands, is really high,” Noel noted.
AI adoption is not limited to younger users. Across all respondents, 47% trust AI for initiating brand and product research, and 16% are willing to act on an AI recommendation without question. Notably, 25% are comfortable with AI learning their brand preferences higher than the trust placed in cookies (20%) or social media (17%).
Marketers Urged to Adapt
To stay relevant in this emerging “Preference Economy,” Gale recommends brands double down on first-party data to better understand customer behavior and feed AI systems more effectively.
“You’ll hear most CMOs today say we sit on a treasure trove of data, but not a lot of insights from it,” said Noel.
Strategies should also include deeper community engagement from social listening on platforms like Discord to in-person surveys for brick-and-mortar retailers tailored differently across categories such as quick-service restaurants versus big-box retail.
As AI continues to evolve from helpful assistant to autonomous shopping agent, brands that fail to deliver frictionless experiences and earn a place in consumers’ AI preferences risk being filtered out entirely. The report signals an urgent call for marketers to rethink loyalty in an increasingly automated world.
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