AI is no longer a future-state consideration for retail brands. It's reshaping how shoppers discover products, evaluate options, and make purchase decisions right now. In February 2026, Stackline surveyed 1,500 verified shoppers from Amazon, Walmart, Target, and other leading retailers to understand how AI is influencing today's purchase journey, and the results are a clear signal that the window to act is open, but won't stay that way.
AI shopping is mainstream — and accelerating
More than half of U.S. consumers have used AI to shop. For brands, the question is no longer whether AI matters, it's whether their products show up when it does.
According to Stackline AI Visibility. ChatGPT leads AI shopping with over 90 million weekly questions, but Amazon Rufus is closing fast at 87 million, a sign that retailer-native AI is becoming a destination of its own. And AI shopping question volume only continues to accelerate as AI adoption continues to grow.
Where AI fits in the purchase journey
Shoppers are turning to AI overwhelmingly in the early stages of their journey, before they've made a product decision. 38% use AI at the beginning of research, and 33% use it to narrow down options before selection. By contrast, post-decision AI usage drops off sharply with just 19% using it after they’ve made a product choice.
That means AI is shaping brand consideration before shoppers ever reach a retailer. Brands whose content isn't structured to perform in AI-generated responses are losing ground at the top of the funnel.
The question for brands is what shoppers are actually doing when they open AI tools. Shoppers are using AI for price comparison, product research, and recommendations, but the less obvious signal is reviews.
While fewer than a third of shoppers actively ask AI to summarize reviews, AI agents rely heavily on review content and sentiment as a primary input for answer generation. Brands with strong review volume and quality have a built-in structural advantage in AI-driven search, whether they realize it or not.
AI Is converting shoppers and introducing new brands
AI isn't just a discovery channel. It's a conversion channel, and the purchase influence numbers are striking. 82% of shoppers who use AI report that it directly influences what they end up buying. More importantly, 61% have purchased from a brand they hadn't previously considered because of an AI recommendation.
And it's one where established brand loyalty doesn't automatically carry weight. The recommendation landscape is being reset.
The brand playbook for the AI era
The barrier to AI adoption isn't consumer willingness, it's consumer awareness. That window won't stay open. Winning in AI-driven commerce requires a set of interconnected capabilities, built now, before adoption outpaces strategy. Here’s our playbook:
Know where a brand stands
AI visibility measurement tracks how brands rank across AI shopping platforms — which questions surface a product, which don't, and where competitors are pulling ahead. Pair this with AEO audit insights to evaluate how well existing content is being read and understood by AI agents, surfacing gaps before they become lost sales.
Build content that AI can use
AI agents don't keyword-match, they reason. Content generation creates PDP content structured for both SEO and AEO, mapped to the real questions shoppers are asking. Dedicated landing pages boost answer impressions across AI platforms, giving brands a presence beyond the retailer.
Invest in reviews
Review content is a primary input for AI answer generation. Brands that collect and publish more, higher-quality reviews aren't just building social proof, they're feeding the signals AI agents rely on most when making recommendations.
Meet shoppers where AI is taking them
As checkout through AI becomes viable — only 5% of shoppers complete purchases this way today, but 18% say they're likely to in the coming months — brands need infrastructure in place. That means a personalized assistant that handles AI-powered shopping conversations, direct checkout capability across ChatGPT, Gemini, and other agents, and native ChatGPT Apps that put a brand inside the platform where discovery is already happening.
Capture the audience AI is building
AI shopping agents are a new acquisition channel. Advertising within AI platforms targets and acquires shoppers at the moment of consideration, before they ever reach a retailer search bar.
The data makes the opportunity clear. AI is already shaping what shoppers buy and which brands they discover. The brands that treat AI readiness as a core capability today will be the ones with a structural advantage as the channel matures.
