Semrush surveyed 2,338 US adults in July 2026 on how they use AI chatbots when shopping, and the headline number cuts against the assumption that AI mostly helps brands close sales. Among consumers who use AI chatbots, 57.5 percent said a chatbot had talked them out of a purchase they were otherwise considering. The same group is not simply cautious about AI commerce broadly: 57.5 percent of occasional or heavier users had also bought something a chatbot recommended, and among weekly users that figure rises to 80.45 percent. Chatbots are also becoming a discovery channel in their own right, with 59.27 percent of AI users saying they found a new brand through one, and 65.01 percent saying they now partially replace Google search with a chatbot for shopping questions.
The finding that should worry a marketing leader more than the headline stat is who is doing the talking out of the sale. Nearly 48 percent of all consumers surveyed, not just heavy AI users, said they now consult an AI tool for information about a seller before buying anything at all, meaning the chatbot is increasingly sitting between the brand’s own marketing and the purchase decision for a much wider audience than just self-identified AI enthusiasts.
The original insight in Semrush’s numbers is the dual role at work: the same conversational layer that discourages a majority of considered purchases is simultaneously becoming a primary discovery channel for new brands. That is not a contradiction, it is a filter. Chatbots appear to be surfacing more options while screening out weaker ones, which raises the stakes on exactly the answer-engine visibility problem this publication has argued marketers are still underpricing, and adds hard numbers to the case that budget anxiety around AI search is rooted in something real rather than a hypothetical threat.
Source: Semrush
