Artificial intelligence
AI assistant
By Rubén García · 3 min
An AI program, such as ChatGPT or Gemini, that you ask questions or give tasks by typing or speaking, and that answers in plain language.
It works like a conversation: you ask, it answers and you can follow up. More and more people use it to look things up and compare products before buying.
Hypothetical example: someone asks an AI assistant “which running shoes do you recommend for roads?”. The brands that appear in the answer get a chance to make a sale.
According to Kantar (October 2026), 32% of consumers already use AI assistants to research brands and products, although only 23% trust their recommendations.
For brands it opens a new channel: appearing in the answers. According to Kantar, a net 75% of marketers will raise their spending on this channel in 2027.
It isn't the same as an AI agent: an assistant answers and helps; an agent also acts on its own in other tools.
