AI overtakes social media for UK product discovery, but shoppers still don't trust it enough to buy

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ChatGPT and Google Gemini have overtaken popular social media sites for discovering new products

55% of UK shoppers have made a purchase based on AI-powered product recommendations

Privacy and advanced features like visual search could be holding back wider adoption

New research has claimed that while AI is helping people to shop, the technology is yet to contribute to any noticeable increases in revenue.

Figures from Vercel and the World Retail Congress found 20% of UK consumers use AI search platforms such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini over social media to kick off their retail discovery, with Facebook on 19%, TikTok on 18%, and Instagram with just 14%.

Meanwhile, 87% of UK shoppers find AI recommendations useful, but only 55% have made a purchase following an AI recommendation.

AI shopping assistants

While AI recommendations and price comparisons are considered useful, retailers are yet to see any increase in buying. This could be due to trust or privacy issues, with only 10% of shoppers admitting that they would spend more time with an AI shopping assistant than a human fulfilling the same role, a figure that is repeated across Europe.

In the UK, while AI is being increasingly adopted by storefronts, it is still some way from wider adoption as a replacement. 79% prefer to open a retailer’s website to start online shopping, and for high value purchases, 65% still prefer to pay a visit to the retailer’s bricks-and-mortar location and see the goods for themselves before parting with their cash.

Some of the resistance can be attributed to trust and privacy issues. The report found a third (33%) of UK customers are concerned that AI doesn’t show them the best products, perhaps because they are inaccurate, or worse – influenced by manufacturers or some other promotional tool.

The challenge to retailers

"For most of the web's history, we optimized storefronts for two audiences: people and Google," said Malte Ubl, CTO at Vercel.

"There's now a third: AI agents that discover, compare, and increasingly recommend products on a shopper's behalf. The retailers who win the next decade will be the ones who can iterate and ship quickly enough to keep up with how fast this consumer behavior is moving."

But challenges exist. While 43% are likely to prefer one retailer over another due to a superior AI-powered experience, privacy concerns and features like visual search need to be addressed.