AI is becoming a major discovery channel: Consumers increasingly use AI assistants to find, compare, and evaluate products before visiting traditional commerce platforms.
AI traffic delivers commercial value: Businesses are seeing significant growth in AI-driven traffic, conversions, orders, and revenue, making AI an increasingly important commerce channel.
Trust will shape agentic commerce: Secure payments, accurate product data, transparency, privacy, and consumer control will become critical as AI moves closer to checkout.
A customer no longer needs to start a purchase on Google or a brand website. A simple request to an AI assistant can now lead to product ideas, price checks, comparisons, recommendations, and even checkout. This shift has moved AI from a support tool to a major part of the commerce journey. Salesforce reports that agentic search became the first step in the purchase journey 200% more often year over year. Its research covers 3,450 commerce professionals, 4,690 consumers, and more than 1.5 billion shoppers across 37 countries.
Consumer behavior shows how quickly this change has reached the market. NIQ found that 42% of consumers used at least one AI tool for shopping within the past month. The study also found that 17% used AI for product recommendations, while 10% used a voice assistant to purchase or reorder products.
Another 10% used an AI shopping assistant, and 5% used a fully autonomous AI agent to place an order. These figures show that most consumers still use AI as a guide rather than hand over full control of their purchases.
Salesforce data shows a similar change across commerce channels. From August 2025 to May 2026, traditional search use for product discovery fell 15%, while newer sources such as AI assistants and social AI grew 38%.
Salesforce also found that 86% of commerce leaders expect large language models, or LLMs, to become essential to product discovery within the next year. Product pages now need more than strong keywords. Clear descriptions, accurate prices, up-to-date stock details, product features, and useful customer information help AI systems understand a product and match it to the right request.
AI referrals already create measurable business results. Adobe reported that AI referrals to U.S. retail websites rose 62% year over year in July 2026. AI referral traffic stood 1,219% above October 2024.
These visits also produced 53% more revenue per visit than non-AI visits. The conversion rate was 60% higher, while visitors from AI sources spent 59% more time on retail sites and had a 33% lower bounce rate. Adobe based the analysis on more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites.
Shopify reports another sharp rise. In Q1 2026, AI-driven traffic to Shopify stores rose 8 times year over year. Orders from AI-powered searches rose almost 13 times, while new buyers from AI channels placed orders at nearly twice the rate of buyers from other sources. These figures show why merchants now treat AI as more than a customer service tool. AI can influence the path from product discovery to purchase.
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The next stage brings AI closer to the transaction. Shopify has built tools that allow AI agents to access product catalogs and support commerce actions. Google has also introduced the Universal Commerce Protocol, or UCP, with partners such as Shopify, Etsy, Target, and Wayfair.
UCP can connect AI interfaces with merchant catalogs, carts, payments, and post-purchase services. Google has also added a Universal Cart that can hold products from multiple retailers across Search and Gemini.
Business adoption still has room to grow. Salesforce reports that 28% of commerce organizations currently use agentic AI, while another 44% plan adoption within six months. The gap shows that many companies have moved past basic AI tests but have not yet placed AI across the full customer journey. Data quality also remains a major issue. Only about 27% of organizations have fully unified customer data, according to Salesforce research.
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More AI control also creates new risks. Reuters reported on September 22 that major banks, including NatWest, Bank of America, ING, Capital One, and Commonwealth Bank of Australia, raised concerns about fraud, scams, payment safety, and customer data linked to AI shopping agents. The banks called for clear disclosure when an AI agent takes part in a transaction, stronger data safeguards, better transparency, and consumer choice.
The battle between major commerce platforms also shows a larger divide. Amazon blocked Meta's Muse from accessing Amazon for purchases, while Shopify partnered with Muse to support agentic checkout through Shop Pay.
These different approaches reflect a major question for commerce: should AI agents operate inside retailer-controlled systems, or should outside AI services gain direct access to merchant products and transactions?
AI-assisted commerce now reaches far beyond product recommendations. It can shape discovery, compare products, answer questions, suggest choices, and support checkout. For businesses, the customer journey now starts before a visitor reaches a website.
Product data, price accuracy, stock information, trust signals, secure payments, and clear policies all affect how AI presents a brand. The greatest change may come from this new role: AI is becoming the layer that connects customer intent with the products, brands, and services that can meet it.
1. What is AI-assisted commerce?
AI-assisted commerce uses artificial intelligence to help consumers discover products, compare options, receive recommendations, make decisions, and increasingly complete purchases.
2. How is AI changing product discovery?
Consumers can now ask AI assistants for product recommendations and comparisons instead of relying solely on search engines or individual brand websites.
3. Why is AI traffic valuable for businesses?
AI-referred visitors can show stronger engagement and purchasing behavior, creating a new source of qualified traffic and potential revenue for merchants.
4. What is agentic commerce?
Agentic commerce allows AI agents to perform commerce-related tasks on behalf of consumers, potentially including product discovery, cart creation, payment, and post-purchase activities.
5. What challenges does AI-assisted commerce create?
Businesses must address product-data accuracy, privacy, fraud, payment security, transparency, customer consent, and the question of how much control AI agents should have over transactions.