AI agents are dominating shopping. Is your site prepared for AI-powered search?
At a glance:
- AI-powered search and generative AI agents like ChatGPT are transforming how customers discover products online
- Conversational commerce is pushing retailers to upgrade from keyword-based to semantic search capabilities
- Your site’s product discovery experience must match or exceed what AI tools offer through personalized recommendations
- The brands that survive will treat search as a strategic advantage, not just a utility
- Smart, conversational commerce experiences are now essential to compete in the evolving retail landscape
It’s official: ChatGPT is now your personal shopper.
OpenAI’s new shopping features in ChatGPT aren’t just a cool update – they’re a signal that e-commerce is about to shift. Again. With OpenAI’s recent announcement of enhanced shopping features – including AI-generated product summaries, reviews, and purchase links – retailers are facing a major shift in how consumers discover, evaluate, and buy products online.
Users can now ask ChatGPT for personalized, curated product recommendations, browse images and reviews, and click through to buy – all in one conversational flow. It’s more than a fancy plugin. It’s a real-time example of how AI agents are becoming part of the buying journey.
For brands, that raises a big question: If your customers are discovering products through AI agents, what does that mean for your own site?
“Retailers should think of AI agents not as competition, but as a preview of what their own digital experiences need to look like – intelligent, conversational, and intent-driven.” — Keri Rich, VP of Product at Lucidworks
Personalized recommendations are the new SEO
When a shopper asks ChatGPT, “What’s the best sustainable dog food?” they’re no longer just browsing – they’re seeking guidance. They want the “why” behind the “what.” And now, AI can answer with nuance, reviews, ratings, and direct purchase links.
This is Google on steroids.
And that’s why it’s scary for retailers: ChatGPT doesn’t just recommend your products – it recommends your competitors’ too.
“The bar is rising. Retailers are entering a world where their own websites must match or exceed the intelligence and context of AI tools like ChatGPT. If your site search isn’t delivering high-quality personalized recommendations or explaining why a product fits a shopper’s needs, you risk losing them before they even land on your site.” — Keri Rich, VP of Product at Lucidworks
This shift forces brands to rethink everything from SEO to product optimization. Simply ranking well on Google won’t be enough if AI assistants are fielding the questions, and filtering the results, right?
Related Resource: Download the ebook: The Future of AI in Retail and Ecommerce
Explore how AI is transforming product discovery and customer experience across the industry.
Modern shoppers expect AI-powered search. Can your site compete?
What ChatGPT is doing – surfacing the right product, at the right time, based on a conversational prompt – is exactly what shoppers want from your site, too.
It’s not about replacing your website with an AI chatbot. It’s about powering your site search and product discovery with the same intelligence.
That starts with AI-powered search and semantic search understanding. Today’s shoppers don’t browse category pages and filters like they used to. They expect personalized recommendations and smart search solutions that reflect what they actually meant – not just the words they typed.
Example: What smart search should look like
Let’s say you’re on Target’s site searching for “Open Farm dog food.” Target doesn’t carry that brand. A dead-end? Not if your AI-powered search is doing its job.
Instead, imagine a conversational experience that says:
“We don’t carry Open Farm, but we get what you’re looking for: clean ingredients, great price. Here are similar brands we stock. What size is your dog? How old are they?”
That’s not just a search engine – that’s a digital salesperson.
“With Lucidworks, Lenovo saw a 95% increase in annual revenue contribution and a 55% boost in search relevance.”
Read the full case study →
These types of guided, AI-powered personalized recommendations build trust and help shoppers feel like they’re making the best possible decision. And in an economy where inflation and tariff-impacted shipping costs are top-of-mind, confidence in a purchase matters more than ever.
Image Caption: This image was generated by Canva AI Image Generator. As of April 2025, it’s still getting a hang of text – but the future of AI-assisted shopping is already here, with personalized recommendations appearing across screens and devices.
From AI-powered search to search-powered AI (the future of product discovery)
We’ve entered the age of search-powered AI – where your internal product data and customer signals fuel the intelligence behind the experience.
At Lucidworks, we’re helping brands move beyond traditional keyword search toward hybrid search strategies that combine lexical and semantic search models. These systems don’t just match terms – they understand intent and context.
“The fastest adopters of this approach have been in retail. But we’re seeing companies across industries investing in embeddings, LLMs, and explainability – because the future of product discovery isn’t just finding a match, it’s knowing why it’s the right one.” — Keri Rich, VP of Product at Lucidworks
Don’t wait for agents to take the lead
This is the moment to rethink your own digital experience.
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The brands that win in this new landscape will be the ones that:
- Deliver AI-powered search results that understand intent – not just keywords
- Help shoppers discover products through personalized, contextual experiences
- Treat product discovery as a strategic advantage, not a support function
“If an AI agent recommends a product from your competitor before your own site can, you’ve lost more than a sale – you’ve lost the customer’s trust that you understand their needs.” — Keri Rich, VP of Product at Lucidworks
What retailers need to do now
- Embed AI into the right moments of the user journey
Not every interaction needs to be chat-based, but search and product discovery should feel intuitive, personalized, and explainable. Use AI to guide, not overwhelm. - Prioritize explainability and relevance
With tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity offering shoppable summaries, your own product pages should answer the why as clearly as the what. Think reviews, specs, and tailored messaging – automated, but human. - Don’t underestimate the power of your own data
You know your customers better than any general-purpose AI. Use signals, including past behavior, preferences, and context to deliver better personalized recommendations than a third-party chatbot ever could. - Invest in experience design, not just algorithms
The AI experience will increasingly depend on where and how it’s introduced in the flow. Prompting at the right time. Nudging when needed. Summarizing clearly. That’s the new frontier of e-commerce UX. - Audit your product discovery experience
Evaluate your current site search performance and explore hybrid search and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to blend vector and keyword search.
Curious how this all works in the real world? Explore 5 use cases of generative AI in search and discovery.
The bottom line
The shift isn’t just technological – it’s psychological. Consumers are learning to shop through conversations. That changes everything.
It’s an exciting time for e-commerce brands to differentiate by using their own AI tools to create personalized, meaningful shopping experiences – on their own turf. Because while ChatGPT might guide the research phase, your website should own the decision phase.
Retailers, the race is on. And smart, conversational search might just be your best bet to stay in the game.
Lucidworks can help. We work with retailers and brands to deliver e-commerce search and product discovery experiences that meet the modern shopper’s expectations – whether they start with a search box or an AI agent.
Want to see how Lucidworks is helping retailers deliver AI-powered search and product discovery? Let’s talk about how to future-proof your site for AI-assisted shopping. Get a demo or explore our B2C Core Package.