The landscape · Retail and e-commerce
Retail and e-commerce: what AI is really doing
Brief me in 2 minutes
AI in Retail and e-commerce.
AI now sits between the shopper and the store at the research stage: Adobe expects AI traffic to U.S. retail sites to rise 130% in the 2026 holiday season, although its own year-over-year growth figure fell from 393% in the first quarter to 62% in July. The handover to payment is where it stalls: OpenAI deprioritized in-chat checkout after merchants saw few sales, Google's new Universal Cart still ends in a Google Pay tap or the merchant's own cart, and JPMorgan, Citi and Bank of America have restricted outside AI agents from customer accounts. An appeals court did find Amazon unlikely to win its computer-access claims against Perplexity's shopping agent, because the agent acts on the user's instructions.
The game: we show you 6 things happening. You call each one real now, early or mostly hype. Then the receipts.
Shift 1 of 6
Agent checkout retreats to a cart, and the banks guard the last tap
Early
The carts and protocols are live at Google and in ChatGPT, but OpenAI pulled back from in-chat buying after merchants saw little volume, and JPMorgan, Citi and Bank of America are now keeping outside agents away from the money.
How it works. OpenAI's Instant Checkout let ChatGPT users pay a merchant without leaving the chat; in March OpenAI let merchants go back to their own checkouts after the program didn't drive sales. Google's Universal Cart, launched in the U.S. in October across Search and the Gemini app, collects items from several stores, then either pays with Google Pay in a few taps or hands the items to the merchant's own cart, and the merchant stays the seller of record.
Overstated: 'Agents that shop for you' mostly means agents that research for you: Etsy saw little volume from Instant Checkout, Google says its cart is built for shopper 'confidence and control' rather than acting on your behalf, and Bank of America wants a human to approve money leaving an account.
Shift 2 of 6
AI becomes the front door for product research, and the growth rate is already cooling
Real now
This is Shopify's own merchant data and Adobe's count of more than a trillion retail-site visits, not a demo; the open question is how fast it keeps growing, not whether it exists.
How it works. Shoppers now ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity first and click through to a store, so whether an assistant can read a retailer's product pages decides whether that retailer shows up at all. Shopify says AI-driven traffic and orders to its merchants tripled year over year in the second quarter, and Adobe expects AI traffic to U.S. retail sites to rise 130% in the 2026 holiday season.
Overstated: Big percentages from a small base flatter everyone: Adobe's own year-over-year AI traffic growth fell from 393% in the first quarter to 62% in July, and in April Adobe found that about a third of retailers' product pages couldn't be properly accessed by AI, so many stores were invisible to the assistants sending this traffic.
Shift 3 of 6
Courts treat a shopping agent as the shopper's tool, not a break-in
Early
One ruling, in one case, on a preliminary record: it changes the legal risk for agent builders but settles nothing yet.
How it works. Amazon sued Perplexity for letting its Comet browser agent shop Amazon on users' behalf and won a preliminary injunction under computer-access laws in March. In August the Ninth Circuit vacated it: on the record before it, users access Amazon's site and Perplexity's assistant is a tool acting on their instructions, so Amazon was unlikely to win those claims.
Overstated: This is one appeals ruling on a preliminary injunction: the court said it is limited to the current record and sets no broader rule for AI agents, and it sent the case back for further proceedings.
Shift 4 of 6
One AI agent now runs an entire customer service thread, and it gets judged on conversion, not novelty
Real now
Agentic customer service already runs at scale, with Forethought supporting more than a billion customer interactions a month by 2025, and Rivet is live at Crocs; in September Rivet's own results were still to come, and Crocs' earlier gains are its own and its vendor's figures, not an audit.
How it works. Crocs' old chatbot sent 80% of its conversations to a human while its service team fielded 178,000 inquiries a month, so Crocs replaced it with Rivet, a single Salesforce Agentforce-built agent that handles product search, sizing, order tracking, returns and checkout in one conversation, built in five months with an outside implementation partner. Zendesk, meanwhile, bought agentic customer-service startup Forethought, which by 2025 was already supporting more than a billion monthly customer interactions.
Overstated: PYMNTS Intelligence found half of Americans have already made a retail purchase with AI's help, but only 24% would let an agent shop and pay for them, exactly the gap between what these assistants already do well and what the checkout-autonomy pitch claims they are about to do.
Shift 5 of 6
Retailers hand shelf data and CPG deduction disputes to AI, while states start banning personal-data pricing
Early
The shelf-data and deduction-automation products are live and billed at real retailers and CPG brands; the pricing side is being written state by state, with one ban starting, one passed for 2027 and one vetoed.
How it works. Instacart built software that stitches together more than 10 million shelf-level data points a day from the shelf scans its shoppers collect, so grocers and CPG brands can see what is actually in stock instead of relying on estimates and periodic counts. Glimpse runs AI agents over the deduction notices retailers use to subtract money from CPG invoices, flags the invalid ones, and automatically files the dispute paperwork to recover cash.
Overstated: Instacart's own pitch describes the data gap it fills more than proof it lifts sales, and the pricing laws are narrow: Maryland's covers tax-exempt food sold by retailers with stores of at least 15,000 square feet and the third-party services that deliver it, and Connecticut's explicitly protects loyalty programs and group discounts, so both leave room for personalized pricing.
Shift 6 of 6
The marketplace, the ad engine and the recommendation feed are merging into one AI system a seller doesn't fully control
Early
Seller-side automation and marketplace recommendation upgrades are live and adopted at real scale, but a fully autonomous marketplace agent operating without seller sign-off did not exist yet, by Amazon's own September description of how it worked.
How it works. Amazon turned its Seller Assistant from a question-answering chatbot into a system that reasons across a merchant's inventory, pricing, advertising, demand and compliance continuously, and said in September that the vast majority of its selling partners were using it. In August ChatGPT's ads began pulling products from retailers' feeds into carousels, and at the time OpenAI's ad platform, not the advertiser, decided whether a single product or a carousel appeared.
Overstated: Amazon's own executive describes sellers trusting the assistant, not handing it the keys: they 'can always review and accept the recommendation or not', which means 'AI running your store' still means AI drafting the move and a human clicking accept.
The scary part
What happens to jobs in Retail and e-commerce
What AI is already taking:
- Resolving day-to-day service requests, order tracking, sizing, returns questions, in one continuous AI conversation instead of routing to a human rep PYMNTS ↗
- Deciding what product images and results show up first when a shopper searches TechCrunch ↗
- Reviewing a retailer's deduction invoices and filing the recovery dispute paperwork for a CPG brand TechCrunch ↗
- Monitoring a marketplace seller's inventory, pricing, ad spend and compliance continuously and running standing automations PYMNTS ↗
What stays human:
Handing over the card is still a human call: PYMNTS found only 24% of Americans would let an agent shop and pay for them, and Bank of America says a human should approve money leaving an account. Ron Johnson, who built Apple's retail stores, was asked about letting an agent choose and buy a $1,000 or $2,000 laptop without ever visiting a website or store: 'Honestly, nobody's going to do that.'
Get better · 15 minutes
The ability to audit an AI shopping or seller agent's actual output, the price it showed, the recommendation it made, the dispute it filed, against the retailer's own raw records instead of trusting the vendor's self-reported acceptance rate.
Try this this week:
If you are in the U.S., add one product you are about to buy, from two different stores, to Google's Universal Cart from AI Mode in Search or the Gemini app, and watch for its price-drop alerts. At checkout, note whether it offers Google Pay in the cart or sends you to the store's own cart, then compare price, size and delivery date with the store's own site; any gap is what you should not yet trust unsupervised.
Your move
Checkout is not the open space: OpenAI pulled back from it and Google keeps the merchant as seller of record. The gap is the plumbing retailers still lack, product pages AI assistants can actually read (Adobe found about a third can't be properly accessed) and on-site search that works the way shoppers now ask, where Loops says 64% of its pilots turned into paying contracts.
Signal: revenue per AI-referred visit, not traffic growth, since Adobe's own year-over-year AI traffic growth fell from 393% in the first quarter to 62% in July. Red flag: a pitch that depends on agents paying for things on their own, when JPMorgan, Citi and Bank of America just restricted outside agents from customer accounts and OpenAI deprioritized in-chat checkout.
Before Black Friday, ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI Mode for your top sellers the way a shopper would, and check every price, size and stock level against your own site. Adobe found about a third of product pages can't be properly accessed by AI and expects the largest jumps in AI traffic on Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so fix the pages the assistants get wrong first.
Learn to measure the AI channel: which assistant sent a visit, what page it landed on, whether it converted, and which product pages an assistant can't parse. First step: ask whoever runs analytics at your company whether AI referrals are tracked as their own channel, and if not, set up that report.
What's actually changing
- 1
Agent checkout retreats to a cart, and the banks guard the last tap
How it works. OpenAI's Instant Checkout let ChatGPT users pay a merchant without leaving the chat; in March OpenAI let merchants go back to their own checkouts after the program didn't drive sales. Google's Universal Cart, launched in the U.S. in October across Search and the Gemini app, collects items from several stores, then either pays with Google Pay in a few taps or hands the items to the merchant's own cart, and the merchant stays the seller of record. In mid-October JPMorgan, Citi and Bank of America also restricted outside AI agents' access to customer accounts.
Why it matters. Whoever holds the cart holds the shopper's intent data and the payment step; so far merchants have kept the sale, the returns and the support, and the banks now decide whether an agent may move money at all.
What's overstated'Agents that shop for you' mostly means agents that research for you: Etsy saw little volume from Instant Checkout, Google says its cart is built for shopper 'confidence and control' rather than acting on your behalf, and Bank of America wants a human to approve money leaving an account.
OpenAIGoogleEtsyJPMorgan ChaseCitiBank of America
3 receipts
- People involved with OpenAI's Instant Checkout said it didn't drive sales and that merchants chose to own checkout themselves.
Several people involved with Instant Checkout told Modern Retail and other outlets that the program didn't drive sales, and that merchants have decided to let ChatGPT handle the discovery process and own the rest of the transaction themselves.
Modern Retail, 27 Mar 2026 ↗ - Google's Universal Cart pays with Google Pay in the cart or transfers the items to the merchant's own cart.
You can securely check out with Google Pay in just a few taps with many of your favorite stores right in the cart, or you can transfer your items directly to the merchant's cart to finish buying on their site.
Google, 15 Oct 2026 ↗ - Citi does not let third-party AI agents log into customer accounts or transact on its banking platforms.
Citi has stated that it does not allow third-party AI agents or assistants to log into customer accounts or carry out transactions directly within its digital banking platforms.
The Paypers, 19 Oct 2026 ↗
- People involved with OpenAI's Instant Checkout said it didn't drive sales and that merchants chose to own checkout themselves.
- 2
AI becomes the front door for product research, and the growth rate is already cooling
How it works. Shoppers now ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity first and click through to a store, so whether an assistant can read a retailer's product pages decides whether that retailer shows up at all. Shopify says AI-driven traffic and orders to its merchants tripled year over year in the second quarter, and Adobe expects AI traffic to U.S. retail sites to rise 130% in the 2026 holiday season.
Why it matters. The entry point to a purchase is moving from a typed keyword to an AI reading an image or an intent, which rewards clean structured product data over a decade of keyword-focused SEO, and shifts real dollars of traffic toward whichever store shows up well in an AI answer.
What's overstatedBig percentages from a small base flatter everyone: Adobe's own year-over-year AI traffic growth fell from 393% in the first quarter to 62% in July, and in April Adobe found that about a third of retailers' product pages couldn't be properly accessed by AI, so many stores were invisible to the assistants sending this traffic.
ShopifyAdobeOpenAIGooglePerplexity
3 receipts
- AI-driven traffic and orders to Shopify's merchant stores tripled year over year in the second quarter of 2026.
The company noted that AI-driven traffic and orders to Shopify stores had tripled year-over-year in the second quarter.
TechCrunch, 5 Aug 2026 ↗ - AI traffic to US retailers rose 393% in the first quarter of 2026 compared to a year earlier.
And in the first three months of 2026, AI traffic had risen 393% compared to a year earlier, as more consumers used AI assistants for online shopping.
TechCrunch, 16 Apr 2026 ↗ - Adobe found AI-referral traffic to U.S. retail sites grew 62% year over year in July 2026.
Compared to October 2024, when generative AI platforms such as OpenAI's ChatGPT became more widespread, AI-referral traffic has increased 1,219% in July 2026, Adobe found. That was also 62% year-over-year growth in July.
Digital Commerce 360, 29 Sept 2026 ↗
- AI-driven traffic and orders to Shopify's merchant stores tripled year over year in the second quarter of 2026.
- 3
Courts treat a shopping agent as the shopper's tool, not a break-in
How it works. Amazon sued Perplexity for letting its Comet browser agent shop Amazon on users' behalf and won a preliminary injunction under computer-access laws in March. In August the Ninth Circuit vacated it: on the record before it, users access Amazon's site and Perplexity's assistant is a tool acting on their instructions, so Amazon was unlikely to win those claims. It sent the case back to the district court.
Why it matters. If an agent counts as the shopper's own tool, a retailer that wants agents off its site cannot easily win by calling it unauthorized computer access, at least on this record, so it has to compete with them, deal with them or win on other grounds.
What's overstatedThis is one appeals ruling on a preliminary injunction: the court said it is limited to the current record and sets no broader rule for AI agents, and it sent the case back for further proceedings.
AmazonPerplexity
3 receipts
- Amazon sent Perplexity a legal threat over its Comet agent shopping on Amazon on users' behalf.
This week, Perplexity received an aggressive legal threat from Amazon, demanding we prohibit Comet users from using their AI assistants on Amazon.
TechCrunch, 4 Nov 2025 ↗ - The Ninth Circuit vacated the preliminary injunction that had barred Perplexity's Comet browser from Amazon.
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction that had barred Perplexity AI from operating its AI-powered Comet browser on Amazon.
Retail Insight Network, 5 Aug 2026 ↗ - The judges said users access Amazon's site and Perplexity's assistant is a tool acting on their instructions.
The judges said Amazon's website is accessed by users, while Perplexity's AI Assistant operates as a tool acting on the user's instructions.
Retail Insight Network, 5 Aug 2026 ↗
- Amazon sent Perplexity a legal threat over its Comet agent shopping on Amazon on users' behalf.
- 4
One AI agent now runs an entire customer service thread, and it gets judged on conversion, not novelty
How it works. Crocs' old chatbot sent 80% of its conversations to a human while its service team fielded 178,000 inquiries a month, so Crocs replaced it with Rivet, a single Salesforce Agentforce-built agent that handles product search, sizing, order tracking, returns and checkout in one conversation, built in five months with an outside implementation partner. Zendesk, meanwhile, bought agentic customer-service startup Forethought, which by 2025 was already supporting more than a billion monthly customer interactions.
Why it matters. Customer service AI is now judged against numbers a retailer already tracks, the share of conversations resolved without a human, search success and average order value, not a separate innovation budget, which is why it is spreading through retail faster than the flashier shopping-agent story, and why incumbents are buying the startups that built it rather than building it themselves.
What's overstatedPYMNTS Intelligence found half of Americans have already made a retail purchase with AI's help, but only 24% would let an agent shop and pay for them, exactly the gap between what these assistants already do well and what the checkout-autonomy pitch claims they are about to do.
CrocsSalesforceZendeskForethought
3 receipts
- Crocs' old chatbot sent 80% of its conversations to a human while its service team fielded 178,000 inquiries a month.
Crocs's old chatbot sent 80% of its conversations to a human while the service team fielded 178,000 inquiries a month
PYMNTS, 22 Sept 2026 ↗ - Only 24% of Americans would let an AI agent shop and pay for them, even though half have used AI in a purchase.
Half of Americans say they've made a retail purchase with AI's help, but only 24% would let an agent shop and pay for them, PYMNTS Intelligence reported
PYMNTS, 22 Sept 2026 ↗ - Forethought, acquired by Zendesk, was supporting more than a billion monthly customer interactions by 2025.
and by 2025 was supporting more than a billion monthly customer interactions
TechCrunch, 11 Mar 2026 ↗
- Crocs' old chatbot sent 80% of its conversations to a human while its service team fielded 178,000 inquiries a month.
- 5
Retailers hand shelf data and CPG deduction disputes to AI, while states start banning personal-data pricing
How it works. Instacart built software that stitches together more than 10 million shelf-level data points a day from the shelf scans its shoppers collect, so grocers and CPG brands can see what is actually in stock instead of relying on estimates and periodic counts. Glimpse runs AI agents over the deduction notices retailers use to subtract money from CPG invoices, flags the invalid ones, and automatically files the dispute paperwork to recover cash. Maryland's ban on charging grocery shoppers more based on their personal data has an effective date of 1 October, Connecticut passed a broader one covering retail sellers from July 2027, and Colorado's governor vetoed a similar bill as too broad.
Why it matters. The forecasting, shelf and pricing layer used to run on a planner's spreadsheet and a buyer's instinct; now a vendor model decides what gets restocked, whether a CPG dispute is worth fighting, and increasingly whether two shoppers pay the same price, which is where the real savings and the real legal exposure both land.
What's overstatedInstacart's own pitch describes the data gap it fills more than proof it lifts sales, and the pricing laws are narrow: Maryland's covers tax-exempt food sold by retailers with stores of at least 15,000 square feet and the third-party services that deliver it, and Connecticut's explicitly protects loyalty programs and group discounts, so both leave room for personalized pricing.
InstacartGlimpse
3 receipts
- Instacart's shelf-data tool draws on roughly 600,000 shoppers generating more than 10 million data points a day.
Instacart is using data generated by a network of around 600,000 shoppers who visit stores across North America more than 15 times per store per day on average, leading to more than 10 million unique data points each day.
PYMNTS, 21 Sept 2026 ↗ - Maryland's new law bans grocers from charging a shopper a different price for tax-exempt food based on personal data.
It bars them from using "dynamic pricing," defined as setting a consumer-specific price based on personal data, to charge a higher price for covered food.
PYMNTS, 21 Sept 2026 ↗ - Colorado's governor vetoed a bill restricting algorithmic, personal-data price setting as too broad.
Governor Jared Polis vetoed the bill, citing concerns about its breadth and potential for unintended consequences.
Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, 9 June 2026 ↗
- Instacart's shelf-data tool draws on roughly 600,000 shoppers generating more than 10 million data points a day.
- 6
The marketplace, the ad engine and the recommendation feed are merging into one AI system a seller doesn't fully control
How it works. Amazon turned its Seller Assistant from a question-answering chatbot into a system that reasons across a merchant's inventory, pricing, advertising, demand and compliance continuously, and said in September that the vast majority of its selling partners were using it. In August ChatGPT's ads began pulling products from retailers' feeds into carousels, and at the time OpenAI's ad platform, not the advertiser, decided whether a single product or a carousel appeared. Whatnot bought recommendation-engine startup Shaped to speed up how its live-shopping marketplace matches a buyer to a listing in a video feed that changes by the second.
Why it matters. The marketplace, the ad auction and the recommendation feed are becoming one AI system a seller doesn't fully see inside, so the sellers and brands who win are the ones who learn to operate the algorithm, not just list a product and wait.
What's overstatedAmazon's own executive describes sellers trusting the assistant, not handing it the keys: they 'can always review and accept the recommendation or not', which means 'AI running your store' still means AI drafting the move and a human clicking accept.
AmazonOpenAIWhatnotShaped
3 receipts
- Amazon says the vast majority of its selling partners now use Seller Assistant.
The vast majority of our selling partners are now using Seller Assistant
PYMNTS, 23 Sept 2026 ↗ - OpenAI's ad platform, not the advertiser, decides whether a ChatGPT ad shows one product or a carousel.
The decision, at least currently, over whether to show a single product ad or carousel sits within OpenAI's ad platform itself, rather than an advertiser choosing one option over the other
Modern Retail, 6 Aug 2026 ↗ - Whatnot acquired recommendation-engine startup Shaped to make its live-shopping matches faster and more personalized.
By combining Shaped's technology with Whatnot's existing systems, we can make recommendations faster, more responsive, and more personalized.
TechCrunch, 15 July 2026 ↗
- Amazon says the vast majority of its selling partners now use Seller Assistant.
Who's doing it
10 companies to know, 6 with a round we can source. Newest first where dated.
Search these companies in the startup database ↗ · Explore all research tools
LoopsAI site search and shopping assistant
San Francisco company whose AI runs search and shopping help on retailers' own websites, so shoppers can describe what they want instead of guessing the right keyword.
Latest · 12 Oct 2026Loops says 64% of its pilots have turned into paying contracts. Sovereign Magazine ↗
$3.5M Seed, 12 Oct 2026 source ↗
DaydreamAI-powered fashion discovery and visual search
Fashion discovery app that lets shoppers search by photo or voice; its newest feature analyzes an outfit saved in a shopper's own camera roll and finds matching pieces to buy.
Latest · 14 Sept 2026Daydream's image-shopping feature matches an outfit photo against its catalog of roughly 3 million products. TechCrunch ↗
Topsortretail media and commerce-ad infrastructure
Ad-auction and personalization infrastructure that lets marketplaces and retailers run a retail-media advertising business without building their own ad server.
Latest · Sept 2026Topsort made OpenAI Ads available to the marketplaces it powers, extending retail media into ChatGPT's AI-powered discovery. Topsort ↗
$20M Series A, 4 Mar 2024 source ↗
Malachytereal-time product personalization
Real-time, intent-aware personalization engine that reorders a store's product grid based on a shopper's clicks and hovers in the current session, no account or purchase history required.
Latest · 6 Aug 2026Malachyte's personalization engine became generally available to Shopify merchants through a native integration in June 2026. TechCrunch ↗
$10M Seed, 6 Aug 2026 source ↗
PerplexityAI answer engine with a shopping/browsing agent
AI search company whose Comet browser agent can research and buy products on a user's behalf across retail sites, including Amazon.
Latest · 5 Aug 2026A US appeals court vacated the injunction Amazon won against Perplexity's Comet shopping agent, finding Amazon unlikely to win its computer-access claims on the current record. Retail Insight Network ↗
Shapedreal-time recommendation and search infrastructure
Machine learning company building real-time recommendation and search systems that combine customer data with large language models for personalized product discovery.
Latest · 15 July 2026Shaped was acquired by live-shopping marketplace Whatnot to power faster, more personalized real-time recommendations. TechCrunch ↗
Whatnotlive-shopping marketplace
Live-video shopping marketplace where sellers auction and sell items on camera; now leans on acquired AI recommendation technology to match buyers to listings in real time.
Latest · 15 July 2026Whatnot acquired recommendation-engine startup Shaped to make its live-shopping recommendations faster and more personalized. TechCrunch ↗
$265M Series E, 8 Jan 2025 source ↗
GlimpseCPG deduction and dispute automation
AI agents that review the deductions retailers subtract from CPG brand invoices, flag the invalid ones, and file and follow through on the recovery dispute automatically.
Latest · 25 Mar 2026Glimpse now works with more than 200 retail brands, including Suave and Chapstick. TechCrunch ↗
$35M Series A, 25 Mar 2026 source ↗
Tools for Humanityidentity verification for AI agents
Builds World ID biometric identity infrastructure and shipped AgentKit, letting a website confirm a real, unique human authorized an AI shopping agent's purchase.
Latest · 17 Mar 2026Tools for Humanity launched AgentKit in beta to let websites verify a real human is behind an AI shopping agent's purchase. TechCrunch ↗
Forethoughtagentic customer service
Agentic customer-service platform used by e-commerce and software companies to automate support interactions end to end; a 2018 TechCrunch Battlefield winner acquired by Zendesk in 2026.
Latest · 11 Mar 2026Forethought was acquired by Zendesk after growing to support more than a billion monthly customer interactions by 2025. TechCrunch ↗
$115M total raised (Series A-C), 11 Mar 2026 source ↗
Your move
Our read, built on the receipts above.
Checkout is not the open space: OpenAI pulled back from it and Google keeps the merchant as seller of record. The gap is the plumbing retailers still lack, product pages AI assistants can actually read (Adobe found about a third can't be properly accessed) and on-site search that works the way shoppers now ask, where Loops says 64% of its pilots turned into paying contracts.
Signal: revenue per AI-referred visit, not traffic growth, since Adobe's own year-over-year AI traffic growth fell from 393% in the first quarter to 62% in July. Red flag: a pitch that depends on agents paying for things on their own, when JPMorgan, Citi and Bank of America just restricted outside agents from customer accounts and OpenAI deprioritized in-chat checkout.
Before Black Friday, ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI Mode for your top sellers the way a shopper would, and check every price, size and stock level against your own site. Adobe found about a third of product pages can't be properly accessed by AI and expects the largest jumps in AI traffic on Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so fix the pages the assistants get wrong first.
Learn to measure the AI channel: which assistant sent a visit, what page it landed on, whether it converted, and which product pages an assistant can't parse. First step: ask whoever runs analytics at your company whether AI referrals are tracked as their own channel, and if not, set up that report.
What's next
- Nov 2026 The holiday season tests Adobe's September forecast of a 130% jump in AI traffic to U.S. retail sites digitalcommerce360.com ↗
- 1 July 2027 Connecticut's ban on setting a customized price from a shopper's personal data takes effect icsc.com ↗
Other industries
- FinanceBanks move agentic AI from chatbots to running back-office and dealmaking work
- Software engineeringSpaceX owns Cursor and starts rewiring it: one Grok bundle, and OpenAI's models on the way out
- HealthcareAmbient scribes go from pilot project to clinical infrastructure
- LegalLegal AI vendors go from research assistant to agent that produces the deliverable
- Real estateLeasing AI graduates from answering the phone to acting inside the property system
- Sales and marketingCustomers start sending their own AI agents, and vendors race to build the front door for them
- Jobs, HR and recruitingAI runs the first-round interview, not just the resume filter
- InsuranceClaims move from adjuster-first to AI-first, humans supervise the exceptions
- CybersecurityAttackers hand whole intrusion campaigns to AI agents, at about $50 a breach
- Consulting and accountingAI-written client reports become a recurring, public Big Four embarrassment
- EducationNYC and LA ban AI for students, not for teachers
- Media and creativeAI video's money goes to the app that resells the models, not the lab that trains them
- Manufacturing and roboticsHumanoid robots move from demo livestreams to paid warehouse shifts
- Transport and robotaxisRobotaxis go from demo to metered fare, and Waymo starts borrowing to scale
- Energy and data-centre powerGrid rules get rewritten mid-buildout, state by state
- GovernmentGSA turns AI adoption into a government-wide subscription, then swaps 'free' for metered contracts
- Agriculture and foodDriverless tractors learn to run the tools behind them, through open platforms and retrofit kits