AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude are expected to play a much bigger role in holiday shopping this year.
Traffic to U.S. retail sites coming from AI platforms is expected to rise 130% year over year this holiday season, according to Adobe’s annual online shopping forecast.
The forecast covers online spending from Nov. 1 through Dec. 31 and is based on Adobe Analytics data from more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites.
Overall, Adobe projects U.S. online holiday sales will rise 6.7% year over year to a record $275.1 billion. Cyber Monday is once again expected to be the biggest online shopping day, with spending projected to surpass $15 billion in a single day.
Some of that spending will come from a growing number of people using AI to research products, compare options, find deals, and track down specific items. So, don’t be too surprised if at least a few gifts you receive this holiday season were picked with some help from AI.
“Consumers are getting much more comfortable having dialogues with an agent, getting recommendations and going to the retail site from those conversations,” Vivek Pandya, Adobe’s director of digital insights, told Bloomberg. “They’re really leaning on the agent to do this research for them and synthesize the results quickly.”
Previous Adobe data suggests that customers using AI are more likely to follow through with purchases and add more items to their carts.
This latest forecast comes as AI companies have spent the past year adding more shopping features to their chatbots. For example, ChatGPT can now create personalized shopping guides that fit a customer’s budget, while Google’s Gemini can help shoppers track price drops and send them alerts when items come back in stock. Some AI tools can even make purchases on a user’s behalf.
But that last part doesn’t work everywhere. Amazon has pushed back against third-party AI agents shopping on its site without permission. Just this month, the company blocked Meta’s Muse AI assistant from making purchases on Amazon on behalf of users.
Adobe’s forecast also doesn’t track shopping done through AI assistants built directly into retailers’ own sites or apps, such as Amazon’s Rufus or Walmart’s AI shopping tools, since those services don’t send new referral traffic to the retailer.
Still, Thanksgiving Day is expected to see the biggest increase in AI-referred traffic this holiday season, jumping 159% year over year. Adobe also expects AI traffic to rise 95% on Black Friday and 88% on Cyber Monday.
Meanwhile, a separate Adobe survey of 5,000 consumers conducted in July found that 77% of respondents who have used AI for online shopping said it made them feel more confident in their purchases. Another 69% said they were less likely to return something they bought with AI’s help.
Adobe did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
