Artificial intelligence in e-commerce is moving from a background tool to an independent actor: it searches, compares, decides and buys on the shopper’s behalf. This analysis from BTUAI examines agentic commerce, conversational shopping, personalisation and the so-called visibility gap, and what this shift means for e-commerce in Georgia.
In short: key takeaways
- About one fifth of online spending in the 2025 global holiday season was influenced by AI and shopping agents.
- Competition is moving from persuasion to machine selectability: structured product data is becoming the new SEO.
- Agentic commerce creates a visibility gap: discovery, comparison and decision happen inside the assistant, where the merchant cannot see them.
- Georgia’s e-commerce market is heavily cross-border, so Georgian shoppers meet AI-mediated commerce through imported channels.
How is artificial intelligence changing e-commerce?
For years AI worked in the background, choosing which product to show and how to rank search results. That logic has now inverted, and AI mediates the shopping process itself. Product discovery is shifting from keyword search to AI-generated suggestion, which makes a brand’s visibility to the algorithm decisive.
What is agentic commerce?
Agentic commerce refers to AI agents that discover, compare, select and complete a purchase on the user’s behalf, often with minimal human involvement. This is so-called zero-click commerce, where the shopper may never visit a website. In parallel, open standards for interaction between agents and merchants are emerging, and search engines, payment platforms and global retailers are already joining these protocols.
How do shoppers use AI when buying online?
A majority of consumers already use AI somewhere in the purchase journey: to find product ideas, to summarise reviews and to compare prices. Conversational interfaces also handle routine tasks such as order tracking, returns and frequently asked questions. Shoppers who engage an AI chat assistant convert at a markedly higher rate.
What is the visibility gap in agentic commerce?
When an agent is the intermediary, browsing, comparison and decision all happen inside the assistant. The merchant cannot observe these stages, because behavioural data only begins at add-to-cart. Traditional attribution collapses and marketing visibility goes dark. This is one of the hardest challenges brands face today.
What are the risks of agentic commerce?
Agent behaviour, meaning fast and highly consistent orders across varied categories, looks suspicious to traditional fraud systems and calls for new authentication frameworks. Brands lose control over how an agent represents their product. There is a risk of commoditisation on price and of bias toward brands whose data is better structured.
What does this mean for Georgia?
Georgia’s e-commerce market is small, fast-growing and heavily cross-border: a large share of consumers buy on international platforms. Georgian shoppers therefore encounter agentic, AI-mediated commerce not through local platforms but through these imported channels. The picture is asymmetric: consumer-side digital adoption is high, while systematic business use of AI is still at an early stage.
Where should Georgian businesses start?
The leverage is not in creating AI but in using it. The highest return comes from adopting ready-made SaaS tools, including conversational service and personalisation, and from organising product data so that agents can see and select it. High consumer digital adoption, widespread card payments and established cross-border habits make these steps low-friction, and the main obstacle is strategic rather than technical.
This analysis was prepared by the academic team of the Business and Technology University (BTU) together with BTUAI, in Tbilisi, Georgia. It draws on publicly available industry reports and statistics and is analytical in nature. The full report, with charts, is attached as a separate file.
Citation: Business and Technology University (BTU) & BTUAI. (2026). Artificial Intelligence in E-commerce: Global Trends and Georgia. Tbilisi, Georgia.