People are increasingly treating generative-AI chatbots like personal shopping assistants, Adobe (ADBE+0.83%) said on Monday.
The software and research firm surveyed 5,000 U.S. consumers and found that 39% have turned to AI for online shopping help, while 53% said they intended to do so this year. However, this doesn’t mean ChatGPT research typically ends with a purchase.
Instead, while traffic from the latest evolution of chatbots “show 8 percent higher engagement,” such visitors are also “9 percent less likely to convert compared to other sources of traffic” as of Feb. 2025, Adobe said, citing its analysis of “1 trillion” U.S. retail site visits.
In other words, Generative AI today seems more like a tool for window shoppers than a boon for retailers, but this dynamic could flip. According to Adobe, that 9% figure “has improved significantly from July 2024, when the same number was 43 percent.” The software giant elaborated: “The conversion gap reinforces that AI is being utilized during the research and consideration stage, in advance of when shoppers are ready to hit the buy button.” But, it added, the closing gap “shows that consumers are also increasingly comfortable completing a transaction directly after an AI-powered chat experience.”
When shoppers turn to AI tools, Adobe found they mostly do so for general research (55%), followed by product recommendations (47%), deal hunting (43%), gift ideas (35%), finding “unique products” (35%), and drafting lists (33%).
Another interesting wrinkle in the report is that website traffic linked to AI tools typically comes from desktops and laptops (86%), rather than smartphones. Adobe explains that this preference sharply contrasts the broader, longstanding trend in e-commerce, “where desktop share-of-visits came in at just 34 percent during the same time period.”
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