AI in the everyday: shopping, banking, and the law

TechCentral reports that South African companies adopting agentic AI systems (software that acts autonomously on a user's behalf, making decisions and taking actions without step-by-step human instruction) are running into unresolved questions under POPIA, South Africa's data-protection law. The concern is that these systems process personal information in ways that existing compliance frameworks were not designed to handle, raising uncertainty about accountability and consent. For South African organisations deploying or planning to deploy such tools, the piece signals that legal exposure may be building ahead of regulatory clarity.

More than 200 experts, including Nobel laureates, have signed an open letter urging governments and technology company leaders to act on the economic effects of artificial intelligence, according to Business Day. The signatories are calling for concrete policy responses rather than leaving the consequences of AI adoption unaddressed. For South Africa, where policymakers are still shaping a national approach to AI, the letter adds weight to international pressure for governments to move from discussion to action.

Woolworths is placing AI-driven tools at the centre of how customers shop, according to Business Day, making it the latest South African retailer to bet that shoppers will turn to automated recommendations rather than browsing on their own. The move matters for South African consumers because it shifts how a major, widely used retailer shapes what people see, consider, and buy.

JSE-listed Purple Group, which owns the retail investment platform EasyEquities, is acquiring Telescope AI for up to $10.75-million (roughly R177-million), according to TechCentral. Telescope AI built the AI Baskets feature already available on EasyEquities, which uses artificial intelligence to group investments automatically. The deal brings a tool that many South African retail investors already use in-house, giving Purple Group direct control over how it develops.

Writing in Business Day, Matthew Renirie argues that AI is changing the threat landscape for South African banks in ways that make traditional cybersecurity approaches inadequate, and that banks need to move toward continuous identity verification rather than relying on fixed perimeter defences. The core concern is that AI enables faster, more convincing attacks on banking systems, while also offering tools to defend against them. For South African banks and their customers, the piece suggests the sector faces real pressure to rethink how it protects accounts and data.

Checkers has shared early results from Pixie, an AI-powered shopping assistant built into its Sixty60 grocery delivery app that learns a customer's buying habits and suggests products to add to their basket. According to Checkers, 98 percent of eligible Xtra Savings Plus members used the feature within its first three months, with more than four million products added via a single swipe. The figures, reported by Hypertext, illustrate how a major South African retailer is using personalisation technology (software that tailors suggestions to individual behaviour) to speed up shopping and increase the value of orders.

Twenty-six former Meta employees have filed a lawsuit in a US federal court alleging that the company used a set of internal AI (artificial intelligence) tools, rather than human managers, to select roughly 8,000 workers for redundancy, according to Ars Technica. The complaint names systems that monitored keystrokes, tracked how heavily employees used Meta's own AI products, and generated algorithmic performance rankings as the basis for the termination list. For South African employers and workers, the case raises questions that apply here too: as similar automated performance and workforce tools become more common, the lawsuit tests whether delegating dismissal decisions to AI systems meets legal standards of fairness, and the disability and protected-leave discrimination claims echo protections that exist under South African labour law.