"O wad some Power the giftie gie us / To see oursels as ithers see us!"
Robert Burns, Scottish Poet
Prompt of the Week
The shopping agents in this week's AI Breakdown are already contacting dealers. In one example a shopper shared on Reddit, an agent shopping California Toyota stores for a Sienna had three jobs: get a written out-the-door price, confirm there were no mandatory add-ons, and compare offers across dealers.
It builds that comparison from whatever your store has published. So shop yourself first.
Paste this into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini with web search turned on. Then run it again on your closest competitor and compare the two reports.
Act as an AI car-buying agent working for a shopper. Your client wants a [YEAR MAKE MODEL TRIM] and is considering [DEALERSHIP NAME] in [CITY, STATE].
Using only what you can find online right now (the dealership's website, Google Business Profile, third-party listings and reviews):
1. Find one in-stock vehicle that matches. Give the listing URL and VIN if shown.
2. Find the advertised price and every fee, add-on or condition attached to it. Note any incentive that expires within 14 days. Mark anything you can't confirm as "NOT FOUND."
3. Compare the price on the dealership's search results page with the price on the vehicle's own page. Flag any difference.
4. Estimate the out-the-door price for a buyer in ZIP [ZIP], line by line. State every assumption you make about tax, title and registration.
5. Find the best phone number and the fastest way to get a written quote.
6. List anything that conflicts between sources, such as prices, hours, phone numbers or availability.
7. Tell your client whether you'd contact this dealership first, and why.
Then switch roles. Write a short note to the dealership naming the three things that would have made your job easier.We ran it on a real Ford store before sending. The agent found fees disclosed upfront, which most stores skip, and a $3,700 gap between two prices listed for the same truck. See the full redacted report.
The AI Breakdown
AI shopping agents have now negotiated more than 159,000 car deals
CarEdge says its AI car-buying agent ran more than 159,000 negotiations with dealers between July 2025 and Oct. 28, and that shoppers using it saved a combined $75.8 million on purchase prices and add-ons, Auto Finance News reported.
That savings figure is CarEdge grading its own product, so read it with care. The volume is harder to argue with.
Who's getting ready for the agent
CarEdge is expanding its tech so agents can reach the same information a shopper would get from a salesperson or sales manager.
Carvana is working to make sure its data feeds into AI bots, so its cars show up when shoppers use AI tools.
Google launched U.S. ads that can appear in follow-up questions inside AI Mode, and says it's experimenting with vehicle ads there too.
Morgan Stanley estimates franchise dealers will earn about $1,100 less gross profit per vehicle than Carvana in 2026, a gap its analysts say AI shopping agents could expose.
What an agent can't find, it can't compare
An agent judges your store on what it can verify online. Run the prompt at the top of this issue, and pay the closest attention to anything it marks "NOT FOUND" on price and fees.
Hear from the Experts
Before AI can help, someone has to write down how your best people decide
Conversica CEO Mike Gilson told us on Auto Collabs that top salespeople piece together a customer's story across five screens, and the reasoning that connects it lives only in their heads.
Our prompt interviews one top performer and turns their judgment calls into a one-page playbook. Run the interview with your team.
Lithia's AI asks the service questions busy advisors skip
Lithia's U.K. stores book service through an AI agent that asks about wipers, fluids and tires on every booking. By CEO Bryan DeBoer's estimate, add-on pre-sales went from close to zero to roughly 10% to 11%.
Dealers called last month "Black October." Who's checking your defenses?
Cox Automotive is investigating a hacking group's claim of data theft at VinSolutions. NorthRock Cybersecurity CISO Mike Perkins told CBT News that AI now lets attackers test stolen credentials at millions per second. His advice:
Hire a third party to pressure-test your store instead of letting IT grade its own work.
Read your cyber policy's sub-limits, which can shrink a $5 million policy to $250,000 for some events.
This week, clear out passwords saved in browsers or taped to monitors.
Bits and Bytes
Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Microsoft will support one shared robots.txt signal, so any site can opt out of AI scraping in a single step. 🚧
eBay-owned WHI Solutions launched Nexus, an AI voice agent that answers parts distributors' phones around the clock and places orders in English and Spanish. 📞
Google Search revenue growth slowed from 17% in Q2 to 12% in Q3, as Google expands AI Mode ads to ten more markets. 📉
Parting Pixels
Thanks for reading, Friend! Remember, if you were not there when it was filmed, it is more than likely AI.
