E-commerce is on the brink of massive disruption. For years, the U.S. market has stagnated, with only about 20% of annual retail sales occurring online – far below the roughly 40% penetration seen in other countries.
However, this period of sluggish growth may be ending. Advances in artificial intelligence are set to transform how consumers shop, reshaping the online experience.
Adoption is already visible: in July, ChatGPT processed more than 2.5 billion prompts per day, with shopping queries comprising nearly 10% of all searches – a category that has grown more than 25% since the start of the year.
While generative AI is spreading rapidly across retail, its most transformative applications are emerging in the form of AI agents – software designed to act on behalf of the user. Powered by large language models from companies such as OpenAI and Google, these agents can research products, compare features, find the lowest prices, and even complete purchases, often with little or no human involvement.
The rise of AI agents threatens to upend the retail ecosystem, shifting control of the shopping journey from consumers and brands to algorithms. For retailers, advertisers, and search companies, the challenge is urgent: rethinking their role in a world where machines – not people – are making daily spending decisions.
Reimagining the Digital Storefront
Consumers today face an overwhelming number of options and are increasingly looking for direct, confident answers over endless product lists.
AI agents are designed to deliver exactly that. By remembering past transactions and preferences, they can anticipate needs and proactively suggest purchases.
Take a pet owner buying dog treats, for example. An agent could scan prices across retailers, compare delivery times, and even negotiate with other agents to secure the best deal, creating a recurring purchase with limited human oversight.
This shift is already reshaping search behavior. Global search traffic has declined by 15% year-over-year, and 58% of consumers now expect to use at least one AI-powered tool for Holiday shopping this year. The way people search is changing too.
In the past, users were trained to keep Google queries short – limited to one to two words – because longer searches often produced weaker results. Generative AI flips that logic, performing better the more detail it’s given and producing richer, more specific answers. And unlike traditional search engines, generative AI doesn’t need links to point users elsewhere.
This raises an urgent question: how should retailers prepare for a world where the search box becomes increasingly irrelevant? One clear implication is that product catalogs will need to be rebuilt for the AI era. In addition to consumer-facing websites, companies may require a second, data-rich content library – hidden to shoppers but critical for agents to scrape in real time.
Meeting this challenge will also demand leadership. Just as companies once created roles like Chief Digital Officer to manage the shift online, retailers may now need executives dedicated to AI strategy. An “EVP of AI,” for example, could oversee how product data is structured and how agent interactions are enabled.
Agents and the New Architecture of Commerce
The next five to ten years could render today’s version of online commerce almost unrecognizable. At present, AI agents primarily assist with product research, including adding product cards, showing merchant availability, and comparing prices. This is only the first step.
In the near future, agents will achieve full autonomy: predicting consumer needs, automatically replenishing household staples, and even negotiating with other agents to secure the best value.
Such automation could fundamentally disrupt the economics of retail. If agents are buying based purely on price, availability, or delivery speed, the ROI of sponsored product listings falls sharply. Retail media networks – one of the industry’s highest-margin growth engines – could face serious headwinds as the power of brand positioning and ad placement erodes.
Control of the browser environment represents another major inflection point. Emerging AI browsers are being built to integrate agents directly into search and checkout, making them effectively “unblockable” and capable of crawling any website on behalf of the user. This shift could sideline traditional search engines and radically reshape where and how consumers begin their shopping journeys.
Looking further ahead, the familiar search bar may vanish altogether. Interfaces are likely to become multi-modal, enabling consumers to interact with agents through voice, text, or even video. A shopper might walk into a hardware store for a home improvement project and have their agent instantly map out the process, recommend materials, and guide the purchase end-to-end.
How Will AI Shopping Affect the Economy?
The first wave of agent-driven commerce will likely emerge in commoditized categories such as groceries and household staples. In these areas, convenience and price matter far more than brand affinity, making them well-suited for automation.
Over time, adoption will expand into other categories. Collectibles and luxury goods – where emotional connection and personal taste dominate – are less likely to be disrupted. However, categories like electronics or furniture could see significant uptake, as agents help match products to highly specific consumer needs. For example, an agent could find a monitor precisely configured for a home office setup, narrowing choices and streamlining the purchase.
But what happens to retail media arms if agent-driven shopping becomes mainstream? Companies generating billions in ad revenue may be forced to completely rethink their business models. For these players, simply increasing the ad load to squeeze out more margin is the wrong strategy. While this approach has been utilized by established firms in recent months, it likely could represent the last hurrah before agents strip away the value of sponsored listings.
The broader pricing effect may also be deflationary. As agents relentlessly optimize for the best deal, consumers stand to benefit from lower prices, but retailers will lose some pricing power. At the same time, digital advertising models come under pressure if most online shopping migrates into agent-driven marketplaces, where traditional ad targeting plays a much smaller role.
Despite the perceived imminence of the AI shopping revolution, risks remain. Regulation, copyright lawsuits, hardware constraints, or even energy shortages could slow progress.
Much will also depend on consumer trust and data access. Will shoppers be comfortable granting agents visibility into their email history, purchase records, or personal preferences? From a corporate perspective, how far will companies go in allowing agents to cross firewalls and access sensitive information?
While much is still uncertain, stopping the AI momentum appears unlikely for now. For retailers and brands, the imperative is clear: those that embrace AI-powered shopping technologies today and invest in structuring their data for agents will be best positioned to capture the upside of the next wave of e-commerce growth.