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Nine in ten retailers plan to grow their AI budgets in 2026, with agentic AI the fastest-growing deployment category — but more than half of consumers still describe shopping experiences as generic.
The FTC and multiple state attorneys general are targeting AI chatbots with coordinated enforcement actions over deceptive claims and manipulative design — forcing consumer protection compliance into core product development.
The Great American AI Act's three-year moratorium on state consumer AI protections has sparked a revolt from attorneys general, consumer advocates, and labor groups who say the federal floor is too low.
OpenAI's ChatGPT surpassed 1 billion global monthly active users in May 2026, reaching the milestone faster than any consumer app in history. Here's what that scale means for the industry.
68% of consumers used AI-enabled shopping tools in the past three months. Amazon and Walmart are racing to control the AI interface — the decision layer — that mediates every purchase those consumers make.
68% of consumers used at least one AI shopping tool in the past 90 days — but retailers are still optimizing for search engines, not for the AI agents increasingly acting as consumer proxies.
Nearly half of online shoppers now use AI during purchase journeys, and ChatGPT's share of product research has jumped from 2% to 30% in two years. Amazon and Walmart are fighting to control the AI system that determines what consumers see, consider, and ultimately buy.
DuckDuckGo recorded its highest-ever daily traffic on May 28 — a threefold spike — the same week Google expanded AI Overviews, and is now making its AI-free search easier to set as the browser default.
Meta is developing an AI-powered wearable pendant and plans to begin testing within the next year, building on its late-2025 acquisition of Limitless. The move signals a bigger ambient AI hardware push — and a fresh test of whether the category can find a mass audience.
Sesame, co-founded by Oculus veterans Brendan Iribe and Nate Mitchell, launched a public iOS preview today featuring four AI companions with distinct personalities and persistent memory — the opening move toward AI-native smart eyewear in 2027.
Google launched Gemini Built-In, a licensing program extending Gemini AI to third-party smart speakers and cameras — taking Google conversational AI beyond Nest devices into the broader smart home market for the first time.
Samsung's latest home AI update doesn't just respond to commands—it watches, listens, and coordinates across every appliance in your home to act before you ask.
Google and Samsung announced Android XR smart glasses with Gemini AI at I/O 2026, entering the consumer AI wearables race against Apple and Meta.
Google launched its Gemini-powered AI Health Coach globally today, bundling fitness, sleep, nutrition, and U.S. medical records into a $9.99/month subscription — the first major AI company to tie conversational health coaching directly to a consumer wearable platform.
Apple's next AirPods Pro — internally called "AirPods Ultra" — have reached advanced testing with cameras designed to give Siri real-world visual context, challenging Meta and Google in ambient AI.
Almost every retailer is building toward AI-powered agentic commerce. Only half of consumers are comfortable with autonomous purchasing agents. That gap is retail's defining challenge in 2026.
Consumer trust in AI to assist with homebuying has collapsed from 30% to 16% in a single year, even as AI becomes more embedded in the real estate transaction.
Generative AI is powering a new fraud: fake small business storefronts with AI-generated founder personas charging artisan premiums for factory goods.
FTC inquiries, state AG investigations, and diverging state laws are creating compounding liability exposure for companies deploying AI chatbots — and the rules are being written in real time.
An AI decision layer controlled by Amazon, Walmart, and Google is increasingly determining what consumers buy before they step into a store—putting $1 trillion in annual commerce at stake.