Last year, millions of consumers used AI to browse fashion online. In 2026, they’ll check out with it, too.
In 2025, more and more shoppers fed AI-based search engines prompts — think “find me the perfect summer dress for a sweltering wedding in the Hamptons in July” — to solve wardrobe conundrums. During the past holiday season, traffic to retail sites from sources like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity increased by nearly 700 percent year on year, according to Adobe Analytics.
“It’s very clear that a lot of people already click on links inside of ChatGPT, and when they click on those things, they end up buying something,” said Juozas Kaziukenas, an independent e-commerce analyst. “It’s already a source of influence on shopping decisions, and there is no indication that that is, in any way, slowing down.”
Now, consumers will be able to directly buy in the same place they’re increasingly going to find the best products at the right prices. Brands like Glossier, Skims and Spanx already offer direct checkout on ChatGPT; OpenAI is also working with Shopify to integrate 1 million of its brand partners’ checkouts into the platform, too. It’s not just ChatGPT: Microsoft on Jan. 8 announced a direct checkout feature in its AI search engine, Copilot, while Shopify said this month that it would allow its brand partners to sell directly in Google’s Gemini.
Industry insiders expect direct checkout to fundamentally change how brands and retailers find and connect with consumers. Even though ChatGPT takes a 4 percent cut of sales (Microsoft and Google don’t charge any transaction fees), according to Shopify, the exposure it provides as well as the likelihood it will lead to a purchase — during the holiday season, AI sources led to 31 percent higher conversions than other sources of traffic, according to Adobe Analytics — is worth it.
Put simply, retailers risk losing out on new customers if they aren’t as present as possible in these environments.
“It’s going to be the biggest change in e-commerce since mobile phones,” said Sean Frank, chief executive of men’s accessories brand Ridge, which plans to integrate its checkout into ChatGPT once the feature is made available for his Shopify-operated site. “People will just check out everywhere.”
Brands are making sure they’re ready, improving their own website’s content and product descriptions in order to improve discovery in AI-generated search results. They’re also developing their own AI-powered search functions as consumers grow accustomed to writing detailed prompts and receiving personalised answers.
“2026 is the year where brands start to rebalance and think about where the future is going and how much to invest,” said Katherine Black, partner at global consulting firm Kearney. “It’ll be a year of experimentation.”
How Brands Get Discovered in the Age of AI
When using ChatGPT to search for products, consumers are more inclined to describe outfit ideas than look up a specific brand. That impacts how brands should optimise their content to appear more highly in results.
“People are not coming in with ‘show me the red Lemaire jacket.’ They’re actually asking for ‘I need a cool jacket that’ll make me look chic,’” said Lisa Yamner, the company’s co-founder and chief brands officer at Daydream, an AI fashion search platform that launched in beta last June. She said that around 95 percent of Daydream searches don’t include brand names. “This is a very different way to start that search than we’ve seen in the past.”
Brands have gamed Google by purchasing key search terms — usually their own brand name as well as their competitors’ — to rank highly. But ChatGPT doesn’t yet sell ads or keywords, and since AI-based search platforms scrape the web to surface their results, brands must ensure their sites are easy to read.
One step is providing more in-depth product descriptions. In practice, that looks like saying an item is perfect for hiking and heavy rain instead of simply labeling it as waterproof, said Caila Schwartz, director of consumer insights and strategy at Salesforce.
In the past year, Ridge has changed the drop-down menu on its site to categorise its wallets based on the types of searches people will make in ChatGPT, including a category of sports wallet — items emblazoned with the logos of American football and baseball teams — meant to show up in a queries requesting a list of NFL or MLB-branded wallets, Frank said.
Brands also have to ramp up content on their site that explains how their products can be used, which also impacts how often they show up in an AI-powered search, Kearney’s Black said. Ridge, for one, has a question-and-answer-style blog on its site with in-depth queries like “does Ridge Wallet make a good gift for men” to mimic the kind of searches people make on ChatGPT, Frank said.
An added benefit is that more detailed product descriptions also make it easier for shoppers to find what they want when shopping directly from a brand.
“The consumer’s willing to splurge for a higher quality product,” Schwartz added. “It’s … making sure that your brand voice and your product, quality, purpose and use case is so clearly demonstrated.”
The Future of AI-Powered E-Commerce
The rise of AI-based search as a product discovery tool is also pushing brands and retailers to launch their own AI agents that can respond to similar prompts on their sites. Salesforce found that retailers with such software capabilities grew their online sales during the past holiday season about 59 percent faster than those that didn’t.
AI search functions are especially helpful for brands that sell high-consideration categories like fine jewellery, because shoppers usually have in-depth questions that aren’t normally addressed in a simple product description. Last April, The Clear Cut, which creates custom natural diamond rings, launched its own AI agent called Eunice that tracks interactions between clients and human gemologists to help the latter improve their communication and close more sales. The Clear Cut saw its sales jump 20 percent year on year in 2025, and its average order value reached its highest in the company’s eight-year history, said Olivia Landau, the brand’s co-founder and chief executive.
But developing in-house AI search tools can be difficult, particularly for retailers with massive product catalogues. Online luxury retailer Garmentory, which sells inventory from independent boutiques, was planning to launch an AI-powered search engine last fall, but pushed the launch to this coming March as the company retrains its software to generate accurate results more quickly, said Sunil Gowda, Garmentory’s founder and chief executive.
“If you want more accuracy, then you’re trading off response times,” Gowda said. “We’re trying to find the right balance there.”
Whether it’s driven by tech companies or the retailers themselves, consumers’ using AI to shop is certain to continue radically altering online and offline retail.
“This is the beginning,” said Victor Tam, co-founder and chief executive of luggage brand Monos, which is working with Shopify to offer direct checkout in Google’s Gemini. “It does feel like it’s integrated with everyone’s lives now. The behavioral search has shifted and we want to make sure we’re there.”