AI Tools Transforming Digital Commerce

There's a quiet revolution happening in the world of content and discovery, and we're barely talking about it. 🚨 SEO as we've known it is quickly becoming obsolete. AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Grok, and Claude are reshaping how buyers research, especially in high-involvement e-commerce sectors like consumer tech. Andrej Karpathy recently highlighted this perfectly: "It’s 2025 and most content is still written for humans instead of LLMs. 99.9% of attention is about to be LLM attention, not human attention." Imagine a buyer exploring a high-value product—say a premium smartwatch or a flagship smartphone. Rather than sifting through dozens of links, they're now simply asking: "Which smartwatch is better for health tracking: Fitbit Sense or Apple Watch Ultra?" This isn't hypothetical; it's happening right now. AI assistants are increasingly trusted as expert advisors that simplify complex product comparisons. For brands, this changes everything: ✅ Traditional SEO and "ranking #1 on Google" is no longer enough. ✅ AI agents handle the discovery process, dramatically shortening the consumer journey. ✅ Businesses must now optimize their content not only for human eyes but also for AI interpretation. (As Erik Wikander put it beautifully) A few eye-opening shifts already happening: 📉 Review platforms like G2 and StackOverflow have lost significant traffic post-ChatGPT. (Elena Verna) 📉 Big players like HubSpot, Figma, and Canva are seeing declining organic traffic as AI directly answers user queries. (Oliver Molander) 📉StackAI now receives more inbound from ChatGPT & Perplexity than from Google (Antoni Rosinol) The implications for Ecommerce and consumer tech brands are massive: Your product content must become "AI-native," meaning it's structured clearly enough for AI tools to pull and recommend. Content needs precise differentiation and expert-level detail because the AI gatekeepers are getting smarter at recognizing genuine value vs. fluff. As Tomasz Tunguz has highlighted, expect the emergence of AIO (AI Optimization)—the next evolution of content strategy where you're optimizing not just for search engines but for a multitude of personalized AI assistants serving diverse ICPs. In short, the future belongs to those who understand how to capture the attention of AI agents first, and users second. Traditional SEO is fading. We're entering a world where personal AI agents will act as gatekeepers, curating hyper-relevant content tailored exactly to individual needs and preferences. This demands a radical reimagining of CX tech stacks, particularly around product discovery, comparison, and commerce journeys. At Swirl®, we're addressing precisely this challenge by building specialized AI Agents—transforming customer experience into dynamic, personalized, and AI-optimized experiences. If your brand is navigating this shift and looking for ways to stay ahead, let's talk. #artificialintelligence #Ecommerce #AIO #SEO

Skating to where the puck is going has always been tough for brands & retailers. Humans are messy & we change our minds often.  Now, with the surge of AI tools like ChatGPT & Perplexity, building a consumer-obsessed business has become more challenging. In 2025, nearly 40% of consumers (and the majority of #GenZ) let AI agents decide what products they see and buy, flipping the script on traditional brand-owned shopping channels. Are you ready for the age when your customer belongs to the agent, not your website? We’ve entered the era of infinite channels and the always-on shopper. Commerce is being driven by a moshpit of AI agents that mediate many customer journeys—from product search to purchase—largely outside brands’ direct control. Most retailers are still building for the past, optimizing search tools that only matter when shoppers find their way to your digital properties (.com, app, etc.). But that traffic is evaporating. The old model is dying fast, replaced by a new reality where AI agents decide what customers see, buy, and from whom. This is your wake-up call. AI is rapidly rewriting the rules of commerce. Traditional traffic pipelines have dried up. “Traffic” today is made up of both humans and agents, flowing through an infinite number of channels. If your products aren’t ready to be discovered, chosen, and purchased by AI agents—are you even trying? 😁 For Brands and Retailers: ➡️ Owning the customer journey is tougher than ever. Your fight for site clicks is obsolete. Products must now be surfaced in AI-powered results and agentic checkout experiences on 3rd-party platforms. ➡️ SEO is losing relevance. Optimize for AI discovery: create solution-focused and rich product data (not just keywords) optimized for AI agents, not just search engines. ➡️ Personalization is table stakes. AI agents understand customer context and needs better than ever, offering hyper-targeted product suggestions and streamlining the shopping experience more effectively than traditional tools. Brands that adapt to AI-driven shopping will see higher conversion rates & be positioned to capture this increase in sales volume. Data Points: 1️⃣ 39% of shoppers (and over 50% of #GenZ) already use AI agents (like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Amazon’s Buy for Me, Google AI Mode) for product discovery. (🙏🏼 Salesforce)  2️⃣ Nearly 3 in 5 consumers have replaced traditional search engines with gen AI for product recommendations, led by Millennials & Gen Z. (🙏🏼 Capgemini) The race is on to build the future! I’m thrilled to see Cimulate AI led by my buddy John Andrews, Profound led by my future buddies Dylan Babbs & James Cadwallader, & Scot Wingo led by ReFiBuy.ai tackling this head on. For my brand & retailer community, talk to me: Are your products ready to be chosen by the customer of the future - a moshpit of AI agents?

AI agents are on the verge of transforming digital commerce beyond recognition and it’s a wake-up call for many companies, including Shopify, Intercom, and Mailchimp, as I outline in my new post https://lnkd.in/gZKzPURM In this new world, your AI agent will book flights, negotiate deals, and submit claims—all autonomously. It’s not just a fanciful vision. A web of emerging infrastructure is rapidly making these scenarios real, changing how payments, marketing, customer support, and even localization will operate: (1) Agentic payments – Traditional card-present vs. card-not-present models assume a human at checkout. In an agent-driven economy, payment rails must evolve to handle cryptographic delegation, automated dispute resolution, and real-time fraud detection. (2) Marketing and promotions – Forget email blasts and coupon codes. Agents subscribe to structured vendor APIs for hyper-personalized offers that match user preferences and budget constraints. Retailers benefit from more accurate inventory matching and higher customer satisfaction. (3) Agent-native customer support – Instead of human chat widgets, we’ll see agent-to-agent troubleshooting and refunds. Businesses that adopt specialized AI interfaces for these tasks can drastically reduce response times and improve support experiences. (4) Dynamic localization – The painstaking process of translating websites becomes obsolete. Agents handle on-the-fly language conversion and cultural adaptations, allowing businesses to maintain a single “universal” interface. Just as mobile reshaped e-commerce, agent-driven workflows create a whole new paradigm where transactions, support, and even marketing happen automatically. Companies that adapt—by embracing agent passports, machine-readable infrastructures, and new payment protocols—will be the ones shaping the next era of online business. More in the third post of my series on AI agents and their impact on the internet https://lnkd.in/gZKzPURM Also available as a NotebookLM-powered podcast episode (highly recommended)