Stockholm – September 17, 2026 -- Only 43% of shoppers believe AI will make their holiday shopping easier this year, down from 48% in 2025, according to new research from Sinch AB (publ) covering 2,501 consumers across eight markets ahead of Black Friday and the holiday season.
Confidence hinges on specific tasks, not AI broadly
While overall optimism about AI declined, confidence surges when AI is assigned a concrete function. 81% of shoppers trust an AI assistant to handle order tracking and shipping updates, and 74% trust it for pre-purchase questions. That confidence drops to 66% for account changes and 62% for payment or billing changes.
Privacy remains the dominant concern for the second consecutive year
43% of respondents cite privacy or data use as their top reservation about AI, with only 7% saying they have no concerns at all. Despite this, resistance to AI interaction itself is negligible: of the 2,501 people surveyed, only one respondent said they would never want to interact with an AI chatbot under any circumstance.
Human agents still preferred for recommendations and voice calls
53% of shoppers trust a real person's product recommendation over AI's, versus 47% who trust AI equally or more. For voice interactions, 48% trust a human phone agent over an AI voice agent, while 37% trust both equally and 15% want the option to transfer to a human if needed.
US shoppers are the most AI-skeptical, Brazil the most optimistic
Confidence in AI varies sharply by market. In the US, just 26% of shoppers think AI will make their holiday shopping easier, while 43% say it won't. In Brazil, 78% of surveyed shoppers say AI will make their shopping easier this year.
"AI for AI's sake doesn't land with shoppers, but AI attached to a job they actually want done does. Order tracking and pre-purchase questions are the easy wins, where confidence is already high. Payment, billing and account changes are different: shoppers still want a human close by, and brands need to make that handoff easy and obvious," said Robert Gerstmann, Chief Evangelist and Co-Founder of Sinch.
Order tracking tops the list of preferred AI use cases
Among the most popular applications, 48% of respondents cited order tracking, 47% cited researching a product before buying, and 36% cited getting customer service. The survey was conducted online among consumers in the United States (698), Australia (351), Brazil (350), the United Kingdom (252), France (225), Germany (225), Mexico (200) and Spain (200).