Artificial intelligence becomes mainstream shopping tool
Using artificial intelligence solutions to aid shopping efforts is no longer the exclusive province of tech-savvy early adopters.
More than six in 10 (63%) U.S. consumers now use AI to help perform a variety of shopping tasks, up from 59% in August 2025. And 80% say they would be comfortable letting AI handle transactions for them. Data from the Omnisend “AI Shopping Report” also indicates close to four in 10 (38%) U.S. respondents have made purchases directly inside ChatGPT.
The survey of 4,000 consumers across the U.S., Canada, U.K. and Australia also reveals how many U.S. respondents have used AI to perform a variety of specific shopping-related tasks in the past six months:
- Product research and recommendations: 47%
- Finding deals, discounts and coupons: 41%
- Summarizing reviews: 39%
- Brainstorming gift ideas: 31%
- Making shopping lists: 29%
- Discovering niche or unique items: 17%
[READ MORE: Agentic AI may drive up to half of all online transactions by 2027]
U.S. respondents who use AI for shopping provided the specific reasons they do so:
- Save time: 47%
- Make shopping easier 40%
- Help discover products I wouldn’t find otherwise: 39%
- Reduce “decision fatigue": 29%
- Help shop with more confidence: 21%
- Help find better deals: 19%
The survey also zeroed in on AI-enhanced product recommendations, asking U.S. respondents what information they would give an AI shopping assistant access to in order to improve product recommendations:
- Personal browsing history: 43%
- Past purchase history: 42%
- Location for availability or deliverability: 34%
- Email receipts: 32%
- Social media likes or follows: 16%
Consumers still do not have full trust in AI shopping assistants. Leading worries of U.S. respondents regarding the use of AI in shopping include:
- How data is collected or used: 45%
- AI completing purchases without approval: 34%
- Prices or choices being optimized for the platform rather than for the consumer: 32%
- Biased, inaccurate or irrelevant recommendations: 28%
- AI pushing sponsored or paid products: 28%
- Removing the fun or discovery aspect of shopping: 10%
Despite these concerns, the survey unveiled steps retailers can take to make their AI shopping assistants more trustworthy to consumers:
- Strong privacy and data protection guarantees: 34%
- Ability to review and approve decisions before purchase: 28%
- Nothing would increase trust in AI: 28%
- More accurate personalization over time: 24%
- Clear expectations of why products are recommended: 24%
- Proof that recommendations aren’t paid or sponsored: 19%
- Well-known brands offering AI-enabled shopping: 21%
Other findings
- Seven-in-10 U.S. respondents would stop engaging with a retailer if it used AI to charge different customers different prices for the same product.
- More than four-in-10 (42%) U.S. respondents say ChatGPT provides better product recommendations than search engines.
- More than one-in-10 (13%) U.S. respondents have used an AI feature directly built into a retailer’s website.
