The question isn't about how we buy, it's who we become

We spend a lot of time talking about how LLMs are changing the way people research products, services and brands. But I think there's a more interesting question.

What happens when AI doesn't just shape what we buy, but how we see ourselves?

People don't just open Claude or ChatGPT to write code, summarise meetings or compare vacuum cleaners. They turn to them for guidance and perspective.

Anthropic's latest Societal Impacts Report found that around 6% of Claude conversations involve personal guidance, with health and wellbeing, careers and relationships among the most common topics.

Sure, some of those conversations are practical: "Should I see my GP about this weird thing on my leg?" But others are much deeper, touching identity, values, relationships and life decisions. Subjective questions with no single right answer. Yet AI often responds with confidence, structure and apparent balance, making its advice feel authoritative.

The challenge is that this confidence can be misleading.

As Anthropic notes, one of the biggest risks is sycophancy "a common trait in AI assistants where they excessively agree with a person's perspective rather than challenging it." Their research also found that once a conversation has established a particular direction, it becomes harder for the model to meaningfully challenge it, "a bit like steering a ship that's already moving" (Anthropic Societal Impact 2026).

Without a carefully constructed prompt and some serious critical thinking, it's difficult to arrive at something that resembles genuinely therapeutic or objective guidance.

Which raises a bigger question.

If AI is increasingly becoming a trusted source of personal guidance, how much influence does it actually have over the way people think, decide and ultimately behave?

For brand folk, that's just as important as understanding how AI changes product discovery. If LLMs become trusted advisors, they won't just influence which brands people choose they may shape the values, identities and aspirations that make those brands meaningful in the first place.

There's a growing narrative that AI levels the playing field, giving challenger brands a better chance of being discovered. That may be true and feel exciting. But perhaps the more important question is whether LLMs are becoming a new layer of influence between people and brands altogether.

Not just helping us decide what to buy. Helping us decide who we are.