MUMBAI: The shopping list is getting a little smarter. Adobe has unveiled a new product discovery capability for Adobe Commerce designed to help retailers make their catalogues easier for AI-powered shopping assistants to understand, compare and recommend.
The offering, powered by Adobe Catalog Agent, structures and enriches product information so large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Claude and Gemini can interpret products with greater context.
Rather than leaving AI systems to decipher basic product listings, Catalog Agent can provide information covering product specifications, attributes, pricing, availability, compatibility, variants and relationships between products.
The move comes as shoppers increasingly turn to conversational AI to research products, weigh up alternatives and seek recommendations before heading to an ecommerce site. According to Adobe Digital Insights, traffic from AI sources to US retail websites rose 125 per cent year-on-year between April and June 2026.
The acceleration was even sharper during the 2025 holiday shopping season, when AI-driven traffic to US retail websites jumped 693 per cent compared with the previous year.
Adobe said the new capability is intended to help AI assistants move beyond basic keyword matching and understand the context behind what a shopper is asking.
That could mean a consumer asking an AI assistant to find lightweight running shoes for marathon training, compare laptops suitable for video editing or identify accessories compatible with a particular camera. By feeding the system richer, structured product information, brands can potentially make those recommendations more relevant.
Importantly for retailers, the AI makeover does not require a storefront makeover. Adobe said brands can keep their existing customer-facing ecommerce websites unchanged, while product information is exposed through a machine-readable layer designed for AI crawlers and LLM-powered discovery systems.
Catalog Agent can also enrich product names, descriptions and use-case information within the Adobe Commerce catalogue itself. Adobe said this can help maintain consistency across storefronts, marketplaces, advertising channels and AI-powered shopping experiences.
The development points to a broader change in ecommerce: the first stop on a shopping journey may no longer be a retailer’s homepage or search bar, but an AI assistant deciding which products deserve a place on the shortlist.
For retailers, that means the next battle for visibility may be less about ranking on a search page and more about making sure an AI can actually understand what they are selling.
