AI is becoming a new starting point for product discovery
The traditional online shopping journey had a relatively predictable beginning. A consumer might open Google, visit Amazon, browse a retailer they already knew or discover a product through social platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. AI now sits alongside those channels. Research produced by World Retail Congress in association with Vercel surveyed 4,000 consumers across Europe to understand how AI is reshaping retail, with reporting on the UK results indicating that 20% of UK consumers now use AI search platforms such as ChatGPT and Gemini to begin retail discovery. That compares with 19% starting with Facebook, 18% with TikTok and 14% with Instagram.
The significance is not that AI has suddenly replaced search engines, marketplaces or social media. It is that consumers now have another way to begin the buying journey, and that interface behaves very differently from traditional search. Instead of entering “best lightweight hiking jacket under £150” and opening several results, somebody can explain their budget, intended use, preferred features and concerns in a single conversation. The AI system can then compare options, eliminate unsuitable products and construct a shortlist before the customer has visited a retailer at all.
OpenAI's shopping research experience demonstrates how this model is developing. It is designed to handle product comparison, constraints and trade-offs using merchant product data, publicly available product information and other retail sources. For marketers, this moves the visibility challenge further upstream. The question is no longer only whether a product page ranks when someone searches for it. It is whether the product becomes part of the AI system's consideration set when the customer asks for advice.
AI recommendations are influencing purchases, but trust has not caught up
The World Retail Congress and Vercel findings also reveal an important tension between influence and trust. Reporting on the research suggests that 87% of UK shoppers find AI recommendations useful, while 55% say they have purchased something following an AI recommendation. Those figures indicate that AI is already playing a meaningful role in purchasing behaviour, even if the consumer does not complete the transaction directly inside an AI interface.
At the same time, shoppers are not simply handing every buying decision to an algorithm. Only 10% of respondents reportedly preferred spending time with an AI shopping assistant over a human performing the same role, while around a third were concerned that AI might not surface the best products, particularly if commercial incentives influenced what appeared. The emerging behaviour therefore looks more like assisted decision-making than complete delegation. AI can reduce thousands of possible products to a shortlist, but customers may still verify the recommendation through reviews, retailer websites, independent coverage or their own research before buying.
That distinction matters because it shows where AI currently sits in the customer journey. It does not necessarily need to complete the sale to influence revenue. If an AI assistant determines which three or four brands a customer investigates next, appearing in that initial shortlist can be commercially significant even if the final conversion happens elsewhere.