Everyone's talking about AI in ecommerce. Most of it is noise. Here's what actually matters.

Five things happening right now that should shape how you think about your ecommerce strategy.

1. The anti-slop backlash is real. Don't be the brand that learns this the hard way.

There's a growing counter-movement to AI-generated content, and consumers are developing a sensitivity to it faster than most brands are ready for. The issue isn't the content itself: it's that AI UGC is fake. UGC works because it's a real person sharing a real experience. The moment that's simulated, the contract breaks. A synthetic creator dressed up as a customer doesn't just fail to build trust: it actively destroys it when spotted. Vogue has already written about it. And now the numbers are following. Research presented at Cannes Lions 2026 by The Harris Poll, the 4As, and Infillion found that 63% of consumers say they'd be less likely to buy from a brand using AI-generated ads. Not less likely to engage — less likely to buy. 78% said it makes advertising feel less authentic. 73% said they'd trust an ad less if they suspected it was machine-made.

The brands currently leaning hard into AI-generated content might be saving money in the short term. But they're making a trade: short-term savings for long-term credibility.

And it's not just a consumer sentiment issue — it's a generational one. A Gallup survey from March 2026 found that excitement toward AI among 14 to 29-year-olds dropped 14 percentage points in a single year, while 31% now report feeling outright anger toward the technology, up from 22% in 2025. The generation brands have been counting on to adopt and normalise AI-everything is turning against it. Human-made content will carry a signal that AI content can't replicate. Imperfection is becoming a trust signal. The brands who invest in real people and real moments now will look more differentiated, not less, in 18 months.

2. People don't enjoy shopping inside AI interfaces. That's the point.

The data is clear: customers don't want to complete purchases inside ChatGPT. OpenAI quietly killed Instant Checkout in March 2026 after it failed to drive meaningful sales. Merchants reported it didn't work, and OpenAI itself admitted the experience lacked the flexibility needed. Amazon came to the same conclusion — they just retired their Rufus shopping assistant and replaced it with Alexa for Shopping, a more integrated experience built around purchase history and device continuity. Amazon's own head of Alexa said it plainly: "Shopping is not something you do as a side quest." And honestly, that's not surprising. Discovering and buying a product are different experiences from researching and comparing. The tactile, visual, emotional experience of finding something you want, particularly for any brand that sits in the premium or considered-purchase space, doesn't translate well into a chat window.

AI might surface your product. It might even earn a recommendation. But for most lifestyle brands, that's a discovery moment, not a conversion moment. The purchase still happens somewhere else. Which means the brands that have always invested in their online brand experience (the look and feel, the user experience, the storytelling) are exactly where they need to be. And those that haven't, now have yet another reason to start.

3. That said: AI is a new sales channel. Optimise your store for it.

AI is a discovery layer, and if your products can't be found there, you're invisible to a growing share of the market: and that gap will compound over time. Shopify's Q1 2026 data makes the case pretty clearly: sessions from AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini grew more than 8x year over year on Shopify stores. Orders from those sessions grew nearly 13x. And those shoppers convert at a 50% higher rate than organic traffic and spend about 14% more per order. This is a channel worth taking seriously.

The practical work here sits under what's called GEO (generative engine optimisation): the equivalent of SEO, but for how AI models find, read, and recommend your products. Shopify's Universal Commerce Protocol connects your catalogue directly to ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Copilot automatically: there's nothing to enable. But showing up is not the same as being recommended. That requires optimisation: structured product data, well-written descriptions that answer real purchase questions, and tools like Yotpo and Gorgias that feed reviews and customer service data directly into the signals AI models use to evaluate and rank products.

The channel is also developing fast. Google just launched Universal Cart at I/O 2026 — an AI-powered cart that follows shoppers across Search, Gemini, YouTube, and Gmail. Shoppers can check out on Google or transfer directly to your site, and crucially, the merchant stays owner of the transaction and the customer relationship. Early retailers include Nike, Sephora, and Ulta. It's rolling out in the US this summer. Meanwhile ChatGPT is building out proper ecommerce ad formats: product images, pricing, reviews, carousel placement, audience targeting, and CPA optimisation. These are real channels now, not experiments.

The way to think about it: SEO got you found in Google. GEO gets you found in the next layer of search. The brands that do this work now will have a structural advantage that's hard to close later.

4. Some channels you haven't invested in are about to become much more interesting. But are they right for your brand?

According to Statista's analysis of Semrush data from mid-2025, Reddit was the single largest citation source across all major LLMs, accounting for roughly 40% of all citations. Since then, YouTube has overtaken it: data from Bluefish reported by Adweek shows YouTube now appears in 16% of LLM answers compared to Reddit's 10%, and is referenced 200x more than any other video platform.

Not every channel lends itself naturally to every brand. It comes down to format fit and whether the conversations happening there match how people think and shop for your product.

Reddit gets cited when people ask specific, functional questions with clear purchase intent: "best retinol for sensitive skin", "which magnesium supplement for sleep". Those threads are answerable, they're active, and AI models pull from them heavily. Fashion gets cited too, but in more scenario-specific contexts ("what to wear to a summer wedding", "smart casual for a job interview") rather than product discovery. The opportunity exists, but it's narrower, and visual inspiration-based platforms remain the stronger play.

YouTube is different. The format is visual, which makes it naturally suited to fashion and lifestyle, but the brands getting cited there aren't the ones posting campaign content. They're the ones making useful, searchable content. Styling videos. How to wear it. What works with what. The kind of content someone actually looks for. That content keeps getting found and cited long after it's published, unlike paid, which stops the moment you stop spending.

The bottom line: if the Meta algorithm changes didn't already convince you to diversify your content beyond campaign videos and entertaining TikToks, this should. Useful, searchable content across the right platforms is what gets cited: and citation is now part of discoverability.

5. AI-assisted shopping will replace static product quizzes.

The decision-tree product quiz has been a CRO staple for years. You define the paths, you map the outcomes, you hope the customer picks the right options. It's useful, but you're essentially trying to fit every customer into a handful of predefined paths, and people rarely map neatly onto the options you built.

AI changes this. An AI-assisted shopping experience is essentially a product quiz, but conversational, and with no predefined paths to constrain it. Instead of anticipating every possible customer need upfront, the AI adapts in real time to what someone actually tells it.

Think of it like having a good sales assistant on the shop floor. Someone who listens, asks the right follow-up question, understands context, and makes a recommendation that fits this specific person. Not a script. Not a flow. An actual conversation. The numbers back it up: shoppers who engage with an AI shopping assistant convert at 12.3% versus 3.1% for those who don't, nearly four times higher. For considered purchases (skincare routines, supplements, wardrobe decisions) this kind of interaction will convert better, produce fewer returns, and make customers feel like the brand actually understood them.

If you want to think through what any of this means for your brand specifically, we're happy to talk. Get in touch.