AI in E-commerce in 2026: How Stores Use It and What the EU Requires

The CIQRA team29 September 2026 8 min read

Artificial intelligence in e-commerce is no longer one feature; it runs through the whole store. In 2026, retailers use AI to help shoppers find products, write and translate catalog content, answer customer questions, stop fraud and plan stock, while a growing share of shoppers now arrive from AI assistants such as ChatGPT instead of a search results page. In the EU, chatbots also carry a new legal duty: since 2 August 2026, people must be told when they are talking to an AI system.

This guide looks at where AI actually earns its keep in online retail today, what the latest data shows, and what the EU AI Act asks of stores that use chatbots and generated content.

Shoppers now arrive from AI answers

The biggest change since this article was first published is where visits come from. Shoppers increasingly ask an AI assistant for a recommendation and then click through to a store.

  • Adobe Analytics, which tracked more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, reported that traffic to retail sites from generative AI tools rose 693.4% year over year in the 2025 holiday season (1 November to 31 December 2025). Adobe also noted that the base of users is still modest.
  • In an Adobe survey of 5,000 U.S. consumers in September 2025, more than one third said they had used an AI-powered service for online shopping. The most common uses were research (53%), product recommendations (40%), finding deals (36%) and gift inspiration (30%).
  • Salesforce reported that in the 2025 holiday season, shoppers referred to retailer websites from AI-powered search channels such as ChatGPT converted nine times more often than shoppers coming from social media referrals.

The practical lesson: AI answers are a discovery channel, and they reward stores whose product data is complete, accurate and easy for machines to read. Clean titles, specific attributes, real prices and stock status, structured data and fast server-rendered pages matter as much to an AI assistant as they do to a search engine.

How AI is used in e-commerce in 2026

1. Search and discovery

On-site search has moved beyond exact keyword matching. Modern store search tolerates typos, returns results as you type and increasingly understands intent, so "waterproof jacket for hiking" finds the right products even when no product title uses those exact words. Recommendations ("customers also bought", "complete the look") use browsing and purchase patterns to surface relevant items. The quality of both still depends on the catalog: AI cannot recommend what it cannot understand, so well-structured attributes and categories remain the foundation.

2. Content generation

Generative AI is now a routine tool for catalog work: first drafts of product descriptions, SEO titles and meta descriptions, image alt text and translations into other languages. On the visual side, image tools remove backgrounds and place products into lifestyle scenes or on models, which is especially useful for smaller brands without a photo studio.

The best results come from treating AI output as a draft. A person should check facts (materials, sizes, compatibility, care instructions), brand voice and any claims before publishing. An incorrect product description is not only a conversion problem; it can create returns and consumer-law issues.

3. Customer service assistants

AI chat assistants now handle a large share of routine questions: "Is this in stock?", "Where is my order?", "What is your return policy?" Salesforce reported that during the 2025 holiday season, customer service interactions handled by AI agents increased 126%, and service agents handled 142% more tasks such as returns and shipping updates in December than in prior months.

A good store assistant has three traits:

  • It answers from real data. Product, price and stock answers should come from the live catalog, not from the model's general knowledge.
  • It knows when to hand over. When a customer asks for a person, or the assistant is unsure, the conversation should go to a human.
  • It is transparent. Customers should know they are talking to AI; in the EU this is now a legal requirement (see below).

4. Agentic shopping

The next step is AI agents that act for the shopper: comparing options, tracking prices or completing parts of a purchase. Salesforce estimated that AI and agents influenced about $262 billion, or roughly 20%, of global online holiday sales in 2025, a figure that counts sales where AI played a role (for example through recommendations), not only fully automated purchases. For merchants, preparing for agents means the same things that help AI answers: machine-readable product data, clear policies and reliable checkout.

5. Fraud detection

Payment fraud prevention is one of the oldest and most mature uses of machine learning in e-commerce. Models score each transaction on signals such as device, location, order value, velocity and account history, and flag or block unusual patterns in milliseconds. Most merchants get this through their payment provider rather than building it themselves; the merchant's job is to tune rules, review flagged orders and keep false declines low so genuine customers are not turned away.

6. Demand forecasting and pricing

Forecasting models combine sales history, seasonality, promotions and external signals to suggest reorder quantities and timing, reducing both stockouts and overstock. Some retailers also use AI to recommend price changes based on demand and stock levels. Both work best with clean data and a human making the final call, especially around promotions and launches.

The EU AI Act: what it means for store chatbots

The EU AI Act entered into force in 2024 and is being applied in stages. According to the European Commission, the Act's transparency rules in Article 50 started to apply on 2 August 2026. For online stores, three points matter most:

  1. Tell people they are talking to AI. Article 50(1) requires that AI systems interacting directly with people are designed so that people are informed they are interacting with an AI system, unless that is obvious to a reasonably well-informed, observant person. Under Article 50(5), this information must be given clearly and distinguishably, at the latest at the first interaction, and must meet accessibility requirements. For a storefront chatbot, a clear label in the chat window is the simplest approach.
  2. Marking of generated content. Article 50(2) requires providers of AI systems that generate synthetic audio, images, video or text to mark the output in a machine-readable way. Under the AI Act Service Desk timeline, systems already on the market before 2 August 2026 have a transitional deadline of 2 December 2026 to comply. This duty falls mainly on the AI tool providers, but merchants should choose tools that support it.
  3. Published text on matters of public interest. Article 50(4) requires disclosure when AI-generated text is published to inform the public on matters of public interest, unless it has gone through human review or editorial control and someone holds editorial responsibility. Ordinary product descriptions are a different case, but human review of AI-written content is good practice anyway.

The Digital Omnibus on AI, which amended the Act in 2026, postponed several high-risk system deadlines to December 2027 and August 2028, according to the Commission. Typical e-commerce uses such as product recommendations and customer service chat are generally not in the high-risk categories, but merchants should confirm their own position with legal advice, particularly if they operate in several EU markets.

A practical checklist for merchants

  • Make product data complete and structured: attributes, prices, stock, shipping and return policies.
  • Use AI for drafts of descriptions, SEO text and translations, and keep a human review step.
  • Deploy a chat assistant that answers from your live catalog, hands over to people and clearly says it is AI.
  • Measure AI-referred traffic separately in your analytics so you can see how it converts.
  • Check that AI tools you use keep changes reviewable and data processing compliant with your obligations.

How CIQRA approaches AI

CIQRA includes AI tools designed to keep the merchant in control. They include AI drafting of product descriptions, SEO copy and translations of product content, and an image studio for background removal (image generation via an external provider); lifestyle scenes and on-model shots are part of the advanced AI tools from Site Pro and Shop Advanced. From Site Pro and Shop Advanced, the storefront assistant answers from your catalog with product, price and stock details, hands the chat to your team when the customer asks or it isn't sure, and tells visitors they are talking to AI, with AI costs kept within a fixed monthly cap. On Enterprise CMS, Shop Premium and Enterprise, the admin assistant, CIQRA AI, proposes changes, applies them only with your approval, and can undo them in a single step. AI text processing runs in the EU data zone.

FAQ

How is AI used in e-commerce?

The most common uses are product search and recommendations, generating and translating product content, customer service chat, fraud detection and demand forecasting. A growing channel is AI assistants such as ChatGPT recommending products and sending shoppers to stores.

Do I have to tell customers my chatbot is AI?

In the EU, yes, unless it is obvious. Since 2 August 2026, Article 50 of the AI Act requires that people are informed they are interacting with an AI system, clearly and at the latest at the first interaction.

Does AI-written product content need to be labeled?

The AI Act's disclosure duty for published text targets content informing the public on matters of public interest, and it does not apply where there is human review and editorial responsibility. Separately, AI tool providers must mark generated content in a machine-readable way. Reviewing AI drafts before publishing is the safest practice.

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The CIQRA team

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