CHICAGO — Artificial intelligence is becoming a mainstream part of the shopping journey, with more than half of U.S. consumers now using AI-powered tools to help make purchase decisions, according to new research from NielsenIQ.
NIQ’s Agentic Commerce Tracker found that 51% of U.S. consumers used at least one AI-powered tool to support their shopping during the past month, the first time the measure has crossed the 50% threshold.
The findings suggest AI is moving beyond its early-adopter phase and becoming an increasingly important influence on how consumers discover products, compare alternatives and make purchasing decisions. Adoption has increased steadily during the past two quarters, NIQ said.
“Crossing the 50 percent threshold is a defining moment for the industry,” said Liz Buchanan, president of North America at NIQ. “Just months ago, AI-assisted shopping was viewed as an emerging behavior among early adopters. Today, it is now mainstream.”
AI-powered product recommendations are currently the most commonly used application, with 20% adoption, according to NIQ. Personal shopping assistants follow at 16%, reflecting growing consumer interest in using AI for personalized recommendations and decision support.
Importantly for retailers and consumer brands, NIQ found that AI is being used throughout the path to purchase rather than at a single point in the shopping process. Consumers are turning to the technology to discover products, compare options, evaluate value and narrow their choices before making a purchase.
That shift could have significant implications for how retailers and brands approach digital merchandising. As consumers increasingly rely on AI systems to help determine what products they see and consider, NIQ said product content quality, digital discoverability and structured product information are becoming increasingly important to sales performance.
“The brands and retailers that succeed in this next era of commerce will be those that optimize not only for consumers, but also for the AI systems helping consumers navigate their choices,” Buchanan said. “The path to purchase is rapidly evolving from search-driven to AI-driven, and that change is happening faster than many organizations realize.”
The findings come as NIQ expands its efforts to measure agentic commerce as a distinct retail channel. The company recently announced that it will incorporate agentic commerce into its broader retail measurement suite, providing brands and retailers with greater visibility into AI’s influence on category performance, brand discovery and purchase conversion.
NIQ describes the emerging behavior as less about AI replacing shopping than compressing the decision-making process. Consumers can use AI tools to sort through large numbers of products, compare features and prices and arrive at a smaller set of choices more quickly.
The development also raises the stakes for retailers and suppliers seeking to ensure their products are visible when AI systems generate recommendations. Product information traditionally designed primarily for shoppers and search engines increasingly must also be structured so that AI-powered shopping tools can identify, interpret and surface it.
NIQ’s Agentic Commerce Tracker is a monthly study examining adoption of AI-powered shopping tools, consumer attitudes and emerging behaviors in the United States and Canada. The latest U.S. findings are based on NIQ’s ongoing Quick Question research, with a monthly sample of approximately 500 consumers during 2026.
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