Retailers examine options for on-AI retail

Big retailers are committing more heavily to agentic AI-led commerce, and accepting some loss of customer proximity and data control in the process.

As reported by Retail Dive, the opening weeks of 2026 have seen Etsy, Target and Walmart push product ranges onto third-party AI platforms, forming new partnerships with Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s Copilot, after last year’s collaborations with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. These let consumers purchase goods inside the AI’s conversation interface.

Amazon and Walmart have been investing in their own consumer-facing AI assistants, Rufus and Sparky respectively to change how shoppers interact with their brands.

Agentic AI is beginning to redraw direct-to-consumer engagement, and industry figures regard this trend as an important moment in online retail. “I think this has the potential to disrupt retail in the same way the internet once did,” Kartik Hosanagar, a marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, told the website’s reporters.

Partnering with AIs like ChatGPT or Gemini engages consumers wherever they happen to be and may choose to shop. Adobe’s 2025 Holiday Shopping report found that AI-driven traffic to US e-commerce sites grew 758% year on year between in November 2025, and Cyber Monday saw a 670% increase in AI-referred retail visits.

“What we expect is a deepening of consumer engagement,” Katherine Black, a partner at Kearney specialising in food, drug and mass-market retail, said in an email to Retail Dive. “More shoppers will rely on AI for purchasing, and across a wider range of missions. As retailers’ capabilities within these tools improve, adoption should accelerate further.”

Meeting customers on AI platforms comes with trade-offs, according to industry observers, with questions around data ownership and the risk that retailers are sidelined. 81% of retail executives believe generative AI will erode brand loyalty by 2027, according to Deloitte’s 2026 Retail Industry Global Outlook, published earlier this month.

Retailers’ websites or apps provide a stream of behavioural data, and if discovery, evaluation, and purchase happen externally, any insight doesn’t reach the retailer. “This fundamentally changes where power sits,” Hosanagar said. “Control over the agent increasingly means control over the customer relationship.”

Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has unveiled new commerce tools for Gemini, outlining how it will support customers from discovery to final purchase. Nikki Baird, vice president of strategy and product at Aptos, says this raises difficult questions. “What he’s describing is Google owning the data across discovery, decision and transaction. Even if some information is shared back, missing context from those stages leaves retailers with a much poorer understanding of their customers.”

Pichai reassured retailers collaboration remains central to Google. “From nearly three decades of working with retailers, we know success only comes when we work together,” he told an NRF audience. “Our aim is to use our full technology stack to help shape the next era of retail.”

Yet agentic systems’ features like instant checkout absorb the shopping experience into one platform. “If research, discovery and purchase all happen on OpenAI rather than Walmart.com, you’re effectively giving away the brand experience. At that point, the retailer risks becoming little more than a fulfilment operation,” Hosanagar said.

Amazon has not announced plans to sell directly through ChatGPT, doubling down on its own AI initiatives. Earlier this month, the company launched a dedicated site for Alexa+, its generative AI assistant that helps users research and plan purchases.

Yet participation in third-party AI commerce may become unavoidable. When OpenAI launched its Instant Checkout feature on ChatGPT last September, it suggested that enabling the function could influence how merchants are ranked in search results, in addition to price and product quality. Uploading product catalogues to AI chat platforms may be the first step in a transformation of online retail.

According to Deloitte, roughly half of retail executives expect the current multi-stage shopping process to reduce to a single AI-driven interaction by 2027. For now the industry remains at an early stage of any transition. “The real inflection point is when consumers rely on an autonomous agent to shop on their behalf,” Hosanagar told Retail Dive.

“Retailers will engage less with humans directly and more with their representatives — AI agents. That agent processes information differently, requires data in new formats and responds to persuasion in ways unlike a person.”

Today, consumers can access ChatGPT on their phones while in-store, effectively consulting an always-available expert. “It’s not just the internet in your pocket,” Baird told Retail Dive. “It’s like having a highly knowledgeable store associate who knows every retailer.”

This may prompt retailers to equip frontline staff with their own AI tools, offering instant insight into customer preferences or shopping history. Alternatively, a retailer’s AI agent could proactively notify customers when a favoured item is back in stock, helping associates convert interest into sales. “The goal is to enable store associates to perform at their best,” Baird said.

(Image source: “Shopping trauma!” by Elsie esq. is licensed under CC BY 2.0.)

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