Without question, AI for e-commerce is displacing some amount of shopper activity. For example, AI chatbots seem to be displacing some other sources, most notably perhaps, search. But there are some nuances.
Anecdotally, I find Google’s AI Overviews to be useful much of the time, so for casual online shopping research, Google search continues to function suitably, without the need to go to an AI engine.
And that might not be unusual, though many younger users probably prefer using chatbots rather than search for e-commerce-related queries.
Some 58 percent of consumers prefer to use AI tools instead of traditional search engines in 2025, up from 25 percent in 2023, according to research by Capital One Shopping.
Still, when AI overviews are available, they seem to get used, suggesting that the difference between search and AI chatbots is narrowing and perhaps even merging.
Perhaps 60 percent of searches now terminate without users clicking through to another website, according to Bain & Company, when AI summaries are present. Shopping queries on ChatGPT doubled in six months from January to June 2025, growing from 7.8 percent to 9.8 percent of all searches.
The distinction between "AI chatbots" and "search with AI Overviews" is important. Most consumers still use search engines, but those search engines now incorporate AI features, blurring the line between “search” and “AI chatbot” use.
The data shows that while standalone AI chatbots remain a small fraction of total search activity, AI-generated content within traditional search engines has become dominant in how consumers receive information.
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