As consumers grow more comfortable with using AI, retail industry leaders see 2026 as a pivotal year in shaping how the emerging technology disrupts the way people shop.

• Nearly half (46%) of teens use AI chatbots at least several times a week, according to an October Pew Research survey.

We asked industry leaders how they saw AI making an impact on shopping habits, and they gave important ways retailers will meet the moment in 2026.

More shoppers using genAI for consideration

As more consumers transition to generative AI for search, Industry leaders think they will also increasingly call on tools like ChatGPT and Gemini for shopping needs, like researching products or asking for recommendations.

• Nearly half of consumers (48%) plan to or have used AI to help with holiday shopping, per Adobe.

“Agentic AI will transform the front end of shopping fastest in 2026, especially in discovery and decision-making,” said David MacDonald, executive vice president of retail and commerce experience at Razorfish. “We’re already seeing this in the surge of client requests for GEO discovery guidance and LLM visibility, which is a clear sign that consumers are increasingly relying on AI assistants to plan meals, build lists, find gifts, and surface products from contextual prompts rather than keywords.”

GenAI chatbots in proven ecommerce environments like Amazon are positioned to earn trust from shoppers and get them closer to making purchases, and retailers are poised to take advantage of that. For example, in November, Amazon introduced an “Auto Buy” function in its Rufus chatbot.

Moves like this will open up more of the customer journey to AI tools, making it more attractive for shoppers to adopt the technology.

Curated experiences with AI

In the year ahead, experts say shoppers will use AI-powered assistants on social media platforms to answer more specific questions about their highly individualized tastes.

“[During the holidays] we saw more people come in with very specific, attribute‑level questions, not just ‘black boots’ but ‘black knee‑high boots with a block heel that go with this outfit,’” said Julie Towns, vice president of product marketing and product operations for Pinterest. "Consumers now expect platforms to understand taste as well as intent."

GenAI assistants add another layer of personalized attention to social media platforms that already use AI to curate what users see in their streams.

• In October, the company launched Pinterest Assistant, an AI-powered tool that allows users to search for products more conversationally.

“Our ongoing investment in genAI systems is quietly improving relevance across the platform, deepening our understanding of preferences and making visual search an even more intuitive path from discovery to decision,” said Towns. “We expect that behavior to become more of a new norm going forward.”

Streamlining branded customer experience

Industry leaders believe branded AI assistants will gain greater traction with customers in the year ahead. Shopify and Ralph Lauren, for example, have included assistants in their roadmap to deliver seamless experiences and build brand loyalty.

Agentic commerce will go deeper than simply a conversation with a chatbot. It will automate the experience for customers, making it easier to shop, order, and make payments.

“Retail in the age of agentic will remove barriers between intent, discovery and purchase, but effortless must also mean trusted,” said Pablo Fourez, chief digital officer for Mastercard. “From agentic AI curating choices to Mastercard’s pledge to phase out manual card entry by 2030, we’re building experiences that are not only one-click and one-command but backed by strong authentication, consent and security frameworks, so that human agency is at the core of how agentic commerce unfolds.”

Consumers won’t have to wait until 2030 to see AI’s effects on seamless experiences. Many of those changes can already be seen in how content and search results are served to individual shoppers, with frequency and precision expected to ramp up next year.

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