Why retailers are putting next-gen AI in the palm of the shopper’s hand

Retailers are increasing the sophistication of their consumer apps with help from leading-edge artificial intelligence.

It is almost becoming a given that a retailer’s consumer app will have generative AI and/or agentic AI technology integrated into its user experience. Retailers are literally placing advanced functionality in the palms of their customers’ hands, leveraging AI models that deliver tremendous computing power the user can harness using everyday conversational language.

Following are three specific capabilities retailers seek to deliver to their customers via AI-enabled apps:

Purchase

The ultimate goal of any consumer engagement is making a sale. It’s no accident the customer is said to be following a “path to purchase” when they begin a series of interactions with a retailer.

According to data from MobiLoud, 76% of U.S. e-commerce is conducted via mobile device and 45% of U.S. consumers use AI chatbots when shopping. Therefore, it’s no big surprise an increasing number of retailers are finding ways to integrate agentic AI into their consumer apps to streamline purchasing via two leading touchpoints.

One leading way retailers are directly linking agentic AI to mobile purchases is by extending digital checkout to popular agentic platforms. In November 2025, payment platform PayPal began enabling retailers on its network to become discoverable within the Perplexity agentic model. 

U.S. consumers using Perplexity's new shopping experience can seamlessly transition to purchase, leveraging PayPal’s identity verification, purchase and seller protection, and payment processing, without leaving the Perplexity engine. Participating retailers include Abercrombie & Fitch, Ashley Furniture, Fabletics, Adorama and Newegg.

And of course, numerous retailers enable checkout from the OpenAI ChatGPT model. Little Caesars Pizza is rolling out what it calls a first-of-kind capability to order its pizza within the ChatGPT environment, using natural language. 

[READ MORE: Little Caesars Pizza lets customers start digital orders in ChatGPT]

The feature leverages Little Caesars’ existing mobile app infrastructure and deep-linking capabilities to help to ensure a seamless handoff from ChatGPT to the Little Caesars app for checkout and in-store pick up.

In another example, Target offers a complete shopping experience through its app in ChatGPT, with the ability to purchase multiple items in a single transaction, shop fresh food products, and select drive-up up, pickup or shipping fulfillment options. 

Meanwhile, in January 2026 Google introduced the “Universal Commerce Protocol” (UCP) open standard for agentic AI-based commerce intended to cover the entire shopping journey from discovery and buying to post-purchase support. 

Leveraging the UCP, Gap lets shoppers purchase products across its portfolio of brands directly while using and searching in AI Mode in Google Search and the Google Gemini agentic AI app, without having to be redirected to Gap’s website.

Discovery

Agentic AI environments are also becoming a popular touchpoint for consumers to search and discover products. A chatbot or AI interface provides customers the advantages of being able to look for items using conversational language and shop by occasion or need, rather than by a specific product type or brand.

One retailer capitalizing on this convenient outlet for customers is Dick’s Sporting Goods, which is utilizing the Adobe Brand Concierge solution to deliver immersive conversational experiences to customers via its mobile app.  AI agents acting as digital coaches will provide personalized product recommendations and tailored training tips based on timely and relevant data to help ensure every agent interaction is customized and reacts to changing customer preferences.

Amazon was an early entrant in the still-emerging AI shopping tool space in 2024 with Rufus, a generative AI-based expert shopping assistant trained on Amazon’s product catalog, customer reviews, community Q&A, and information from across the web to answer customer questions; make recommendations based on conversational context; and facilitate product discovery within the mainstream Amazon shopping experience. 

Since its initial release, Amazon has upgraded Rufus several times and presumably will continue to do so.

Loyalty

Finally, some retailers are also increasing the value they obtain from generative and agentic AI by synthesizing features from the advanced AI models into their mobile loyalty offerings. Beauty retailer Sephora currently enables shoppers to use their Sephora loyalty rewards and member benefits such as free shipping promotions and samples within ChatGPT, with plans for future updates enabling payments and checkout directly within the app. 

And home improvement giant Home Depot has been adding mobile AI features to its Home Depot Pro Xtra loyalty program which is geared toward industry professionals. These include Material List Builder AI, an application designed to help professional renovators, remodelers, builders and specialty tradespeople create actionable project material lists within minutes.

Home Depot Pro Xtra members also have access to an AI solution called Blueprint Takeoffs, which is designed to provide professional renovators, remodelers and builders with faster, more accurate and cost-effective material lists and estimates – also known as "takeoffs" – for single-family project blueprints.