Consumers Warm Up to AI Shopping Tools Across Generations

Artificial intelligence (AI) is moving beyond search and recommendations into actively helping consumers shop, with new agentic AI tools designed to browse, compare and even purchase products on behalf of consumers.

New data from PYMNTS Intelligence shows that AI shopping adoption is already gaining ground among younger and middle-aged consumers. About one-third of all respondents (32%) said they have used or would use generative AI for shopping.

Bridge millennials — older millennials straddling Gen X — lead the way, with 38% reporting AI use for shopping. Zillennials are close behind at 36%, followed by millennials at 35% Gen X is next, at 33%, while Gen Z comes in at 31%. Baby boomers show some traction as well, with 28% using gen AI for shopping.

Overall, 32% of people surveyed said they used gen AI for shopping. The use case reporting the highest percentage was work at 40%, followed by creative endeavors and educational purposes.

Source: PYMNTS Intelligence 2024 data from a survey of 2,261 respondents

Moreover, shoppers are becoming more comfortable letting AI handle transactions. An August Omnisend report said 32% are reluctant to let AI do the checkout, down from 66% six months ago. However, 85% still have concerns about privacy, personalization and overall AI fatigue.

Agentic AI, which refers to autonomous software agents performing tasks for users, is being tested throughout the retail and finance sectors.

Amazon’s “Buy For Me” feature lets shoppers order products from other websites while staying inside Amazon’s platform. PayPal partnered with Perplexity to be the embedded checkout option within the AI chatbot, while Visa and Mastercard are deploying agentic commerce.

Read more: Getting to Know You: How AI Is Shaping the Future of Shopping

AI-Powered Shopping Tools

Meanwhile, Perplexity is beefing up its AI with more shopping muscle.

It has a dedicated shopping landing page.

Users can research and buy products within the chatbot.

One-click checkout and free shipping for Pro subscribers, called “Buy with Pro.”

Snap to shop lets users take a photo of what they’d like to buy and Perplexity will find similar items.

“Unbiased” recommendations — results are not sponsored.

Integrated with Shopify to find products sold by its merchants.

Merchant program that lets retailers share their product specifications with Perplexity to raise their chances of being named.

OpenAI is rolling out “Shopping Results” to free, Plus and Pro users, its subscriptions for consumers, even if they’re logged out of ChatGPT. Team and Enterprise subscriptions are for businesses.

“Users come to ChatGPT with all kinds of questions, and one common topic is researching and buying products,” OpenAI said in a blog post.

While not as robust as Perplexity’s offerings, OpenAI has beefed up ChatGPT’s answers to shopping questions. It now displays relevant product options in “visually rich carousels,” provide additional product details and link users to websites to learn more or buy the product.

ChatGPT chooses a product to show a user based on relevance to the shopper’s intent, past queries or preferences, or explicit instructions. It will also consider factors a general shopper typically looks at, such as price, reviews and ease of use. Notably, OpenAI products are selected independently, and “not ads.”

OpenAI also offers an experimental toll-free number to “speak” to an AI shopping bot: 800-GPT-0090.

On the merchant’s side, ChatGPT will look at structured metadata, such as price, product description and the like. It will consider products already within its training data before doing a new web search for products.

OpenAI offers a program in which merchants can submit product feeds to ChatGPT to ensure that they’ll be seen.

Google has been ramping up its AI shopping chops as well.

Its new AI Mode combines the conversational capability of Gemini with Google’s Shopping Graph, which contains over 50 billion product listings that are refreshed hourly. Google also debuted a virtual try-on feature that lets users to upload a photo to see how clothes might look on them.

Google has introduced an agentic checkout feature as well. Shoppers can track price drops on specific items by setting their desired size, color, and budget. When conditions are met, users tap “buy for me,” and Google completes the purchase using Google Pay.

Read more:

84% of Shoppers Want One-Click Checkout

Digital Wallet Use Jumps to 16% of Online Purchases

How 31 Years of eCommerce Changed What, How and When Shoppers Buy