The desire for (good) AI shopping

TL;DR: A year ago, AI-referred visitors to US retail sites converted to purchases 38% worse than regular human traffic, according to Adobe Analytics. Last month, they apparently converted 42% better—and generated 37% more revenue per visit. The data suggests consumers are increasingly outsourcing the miserable part of online shopping—wading through sponsored clutter and endless options—to AI. The catch is that AI shopping's actual execution is still shaky.

What happened: Adobe's analysis of more than 1 trillion visits to US retail sites found that AI-referred traffic rose 393% year over year in Q1—but the more telling number is what those visitors are worth. A year ago, a regular human visitor generated 128% more revenue per visit than an AI-referred one; now it's inverted. AI visitors spend 48% longer on site and view 13% more pages (Adobe sells AI e-commerce products, though, so take all this with a grain of salt). The likely reason for the flip: AI selects products for engaged shoppers before they click, so they arrive already knowing roughly what they want—and now more people are using AI as a shopping tool.

Cutting through the noise: More than signaling a love affair with AI shopping, these numbers might reflect what most of us already know: Online shopping today is a drag, and we’re drowning in a sea of options. AI companies have positioned chatbots and agents as personalized shopping assistants that can help narrow down choices. Google’s AI Overviews now surface product recommendations at the top, so you’re not scrolling through a million individual sites (and its AI Mode can even help you find in-stock products). Amazon claims over 250 million people used Rufus, its AI shopping assistant, in 2025 and last October launched Help Me Decide, a Rufus feature that picks one single best product for you. Per Wired, Walmart’s own AI chatbot Sparky is bringing in new customers at twice the rate of its search engine referrals.

Still imperfect: The actual rollout of AI shopping has had real stumbles. Walmart’s original ChatGPT-integrated checkout was pulled after six months because it converted three times worse than its own site. Walmart’s executive VP told Wired his theory: Shoppers didn’t like that they had to buy items individually inside the chatbot. And Adobe’s survey shows that while 39% of respondents have tried AI shopping (flat from a year ago), the share saying it improved their shopping experience fell from 92% to 85%.

Bottom line: Adobe's data suggests the funnel is already shifting—AI is routing higher-quality shoppers to retail sites even before the experience of buying through AI has been figured out. Consumers seem willing to use AI to find things, but they're not yet ready to hand it their credit card. And the real test is whether AI can actually execute on beating online shopping’s clunky status quo. —WK