Five years ago, we bought a Samsung smart fridge that could tag expiry dates of items and remind you to use / reorder.. but you need to manually entered each and every item. It sounded futuristic… until you realised it needed more typing than eating. Like many “smart” ideas back then, it was simply waiting for an ecosystem that did not exist yet.
That ecosystem might finally be here.
At the Global Fintech Festival 2025, National Payments Corporation Of India (NPCI) demoed a end-to-end automated payment that showcased the new agentic AI framework for UPI.
An AI assistant was prompted with a recipe request, scaled it for ten people using Gemini, ordered ingredients through BigBasket, and completed payment via a Bank card on Google Pay .. all without the user ever leaving the chat.
The entire act of brand interaction and persuasion has kind of disappeared.
For over a century, marketing has lived off influence .. the billboard, the jingle, the persuasive salesperson. But when your digital assistant can decide, compare, and transact in seconds, persuasion may no longer be that relevant. The consumer still exists, but the decision has moved elsewhere without their direct interaction.
Google just launched Pomelli a AI marketing tool that can scan a brand’s website, learn its tone, and craft campaigns in minutes. Soon, your AI agent might negotiate directly with a brand’s agent… exchanging offers.. not emotions.
Advertising could turn into an api calls between machines.
In India, as always, we have given technology a human accent. The grocer who knows your taste, the banker who remembers your birthday, the advisor who sends festive wishes … those gestures have long been our currency of trust.
As machines begin to mimic them, persuasion may not end…. it may simply evolve in another form… but only if we also evolve how we build that connection.
For brands, this is both an opportunity and a warning.
The opportunity – to stay relevant and discoverable in this new agentic ecosystem.
The warning- if your brand can not speak to the buyer’s assistant, you might never be seen at all.
There is no clear way to predict how this will play out. Technology evolution and adoption rarely follows straight lines. But the direction feels certain.. from persuasion to prediction, from direct advertising to automation.
The day my fridge reorders the perfect coffee beans in just the right quantity, without me typing or getting involved, I will know we have crossed that line and that old Samsung fridge might finally be living up to its promise. Somehow I get a felling that the moment is getting close.
Would you find this convenient or unsettling?
Originally posted on LinkedIn on November 5, 2025.
Srinivas Jain 