Between July 2024 and February 2025, Adobe recorded a 1,200% increase in traffic to U. For anyone tracking the broader shift toward automation and machine-led decision-making, it’s a signal of something larger than a marketing trend, it’s the early shape of how purchasing itself is being restructured around AI systems rather than human browsing habits. Three Different Shopping Models The shift becomes clearer when you lay out how a purchase actually gets made under each model. Traditional ecommerce follows a familiar path: a human searches Google, lands on a website, evaluates a product, and checks out. AI discovery changes the second step, a human asks an AI assistant a question, receives a recommendation, and follows that recommendation to a retailer before completing the purchase themselves.