It\u2019s early for artificial intelligence shopping tools, but the results are already showing up in bigger orders and more spending, and major retailers said so this earnings season.<\/p>\n
Walmart<\/a>\u2019s global eCommerce grew 23% in the quarter, according to earnings<\/a> results released Thursday (Aug. 20). Shoppers using Walmart\u2019s AI assistant, Sparky<\/a>, spend 40% more per order, with total users up 70% year over year, CEO John Furner<\/a> said on an earnings call.<\/p>\n Amazon<\/a> reported the same pattern after merging its AI tools into a single assistant, Alexa for Shopping<\/a>, in May. More than 350 million shoppers have used it in the past year, active users nearly doubled year over year, and U.S. customers who use it spend 40% more per order than those who don\u2019t, CEO Andy Jassy<\/a> said, CX Dive reported<\/a> July 31.<\/p>\n Target<\/a> made the same case this week. Digital traffic from external AI platforms is growing more than three and a half times faster than the industry average, CEO Michael Fiddelke<\/a> said during an earnings<\/a> call, citing partnerships<\/a> with companies like OpenAI<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile still small in total today, as more consumers begin to explore the benefits of agentic shopping, Target\u2019s digital traffic sourced from external AI platforms is growing,\u201d Fiddelke said.<\/p>\n Target is also weaving AI into its own app. AI-powered teacher and college wish lists saw creation volume jump more than 50% ahead of back-to-school season.<\/p>\n Numbers So Far Come Mostly From Grocery<\/p>\n Nearly every hard number retailers have shared comes via repetitive, habitual shopping from groceries and household staples.<\/p>\n Albertsons<\/a> said it has seen average order value<\/a> increase 10% when customers use the company\u2019s conversational search and 26% when they use its more comprehensive assistants that find recipes and ingredients that match their dietary preferences.<\/p>\n Those categories make an AI assistant\u2019s job easy. Predicting what a customer needs again is simpler than helping them discover something new.<\/p>\n What hasn\u2019t been proven is whether that holds outside grocery, in categories driven by browsing and discovery rather than repetition.<\/p>\n Shopify<\/a>\u2019s data hints at the harder test. AI-referred traffic<\/a> and orders on Shopify each tripled year over year, and its share of sales outside major product categories has held steady since 2025, meaning AI is already reaching niche, non-repetitive purchases there.<\/p>\n Discovery-Driven Retail Tells a Different Story<\/p>\n TJX<\/a>, the parent of TJ Maxx<\/a>, Marshalls<\/a> and HomeGoods<\/a>, reported comparable sales growth<\/a> of 4%, but the company\u2019s earnings call centered on merchandising, not AI, CNBC reported<\/a> Wednesday (Aug. 19). TJX sells almost entirely through in-store, treasure-hunt browsing, the kind of unpredictable shopping an AI assistant is least equipped to replicate.<\/p>\n Etsy<\/a> showed the same limit from the other direction. Agentic traffic<\/a> on the platform grew roughly 15 times year over year in the fourth quarter of 2025, and it remained less than 1% of Etsy\u2019s total traffic<\/a> as of its most recent quarter.<\/p>\n Etsy is built entirely around the kind of browsing and discovery TJX relies on in stores, one-of-a-kind items a shopper wasn\u2019t necessarily searching for by name, and even there, AI\u2019s actual share of traffic remains small despite a fast growth rate.<\/p>\n The gap is the real test ahead. Walmart, Amazon and Target all have real numbers showing AI driving more spending per order, but those numbers sit almost entirely in categories where predicting demand is easiest.<\/p>\n Consumers are already comfortable using AI to shortcut the research part of shopping. The PYMNTS Intelligence<\/a> report \u201cThe Overlap Effect: How Amazon and Walmart Expanded the Crowd and Shrank the Basket<\/a>\u201d found in July that 38% of AI users compared prices across retailers with the technology and 36% used it to find deals.<\/p>\n Willingness extends further than research alone. The PYMNTS Intelligence report \u201cFrom Assistive to Agentic AI: Consumers Wade Into Autonomous Commerce<\/a>\u201d found in January that 49% of consumers interested in agentic AI would let an assistant complete both routine and larger, research-driven purchases on their own.<\/p>\n However, that willingness has mostly been tested in categories consumers already buy on repeat. Whether it holds once the purchase is something a shopper wasn\u2019t already planning to make is the question this quarter\u2019s earnings haven\u2019t answered yet.<\/p>\n