67% asked a chatbot: the gift search has left the search box
Attentive's survey of 600 American adults finds 67% used an AI chatbot to help them shop in the past three months, rising to 80% of Gen Z. Separately 62% will plan holiday purchases before November and 71% will start buying before Black Friday.
By The Retail Desk
What changed
Two thirds of American shoppers have started asking a machine what to buy.
What it means
- The gift search has left the search box, and a jeweller's product copy is now being read by a machine before it is read by a customer. That makes plain, specific, factual descriptions worth more than atmospheric ones, because a model summarising a page rewards carat weight, metal, setting and price stated clearly and has nothing to do with an adjective.
- The cheapest action available this month is to write the specification into the page text rather than leaving it in an image, and to do it before October rather than after.
Key figures
| used an AI chatbot to shop | 67% |
|---|---|
| of Gen Z respondents | 80% |
| used it to compare brands | 51% |
| start buying before Black Friday | 71% |
Source: Attentive, 600 US adults
Two thirds asked a machine
Attentive's holiday research, conducted online among 600 United States adults and published this week, finds that 67% used an AI chatbot such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity to help with shopping in the past three months, rising to 80% among Gen Z respondents.
Among those users, the most common tasks were researching specific products, comparing brands and features, seeking recommendations and finding deals, with 51% using the tools to compare brands.
The second finding moves the calendar. Attentive puts 62% of consumers planning holiday purchases before November and 71% expecting to start buying before Black Friday, with 46% beginning to shop before November arrives.
A jewellery business that treats the season as a five-week sprint from the last Friday in November is now planning for a window in which most of the intent has already formed and a substantial share of the money has already been committed.
Where the holiday season now starts
Source: Attentive, 600 US adults
The calendar moves to October
Put the two together and the operational consequence is specific rather than atmospheric. If two thirds of buyers consult a language model and most of them form intent in October, then the sentence a model produces about your shop in October is doing the work a shop window used to do in December.
This is the same mechanism the Natural Diamond Council is spending against, which this desk reported on Wednesday: the council has engaged the agency Artefact specifically to work on how natural diamonds appear inside large language models.
| Figure | |
|---|---|
| Start Buying Before Black Friday | 71% |
| Used An Ai Chatbot To Shop | 67% |
| Plan Purchases Before November | 62% |
| Begin Shopping Before November | 46% |
Per cent of 600 US adults surveyed online. Attentive holiday research, August 2026. Carat Capital graphics desk.
Consultation is not conversion
Two cautions on the number. A sample of 600 adults surveyed online is small and self-selecting toward people comfortable answering surveys on a screen, which is the same population most likely to have tried a chatbot, so 67% is probably a ceiling rather than a floor.
And using a chatbot to research is not the same as buying through one; the survey measures consultation, not conversion, and no figure in it says a single ring was sold by a model. What it does establish is where the consideration happens.
The story so far
Go deeper
Method
Per cent of 600 US adults surveyed online. Attentive holiday research, August 2026.