AI shopping passes 50% of US consumers for the first time, NIQ says

Some 51% of US consumers used at least one AI tool to help them shop in the past month, according to new figures from NIQ. It is the first time the share has passed 50% in the market research firm’s Agentic Commerce Tracker.

Use has grown steadily over the past two quarters, NIQ said. It now covers every step of a purchase, from finding a product to deciding to buy it.

What NIQ found about AI shopping

Product recommendations were the most common use, at 20% of consumers. AI personal shopping assistants came next, at 16%.

People mostly use AI to compare options, judge value and narrow their choices, the survey found. In NIQ’s words, AI is “compressing decision-making” rather than replacing shopping.

“Just months ago, AI-assisted shopping was viewed as an emerging behavior among early adopters. Today, it is now mainstream,” said Liz Buchanan, NIQ’s president for North America.

For brands and retailers, that means product content, how easily AI can find a product, and structured product data now matter as much as shelf placement and search rankings, NIQ said.

“The path to purchase is rapidly evolving from search-driven to AI-driven, and that change is happening faster than many organizations realize,” Buchanan said.

How the survey works

The tracker is a monthly survey. NIQ asks about 500 US consumers each month, as part of its Quick Question research. The tracker also covers Canada, but NIQ published only US figures.

NIQ also sells tools to measure this shift. On 2 September, it announced a product with Similarweb that will track how brands show up in ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode, Perplexity and Claude. It will also measure how much traffic and how many sales come from those AI tools. A first version is due in the fourth quarter of 2026, starting with a few product categories and markets.

Similarweb’s own data shows that AI search is fragmenting across several assistants. Payment companies are also working on agents that buy. Visa, Mastercard and Ant International have teamed up on ID checks for agents. Agentic commerce is also changing how people buy their groceries.