Target is weaving artificial intelligence (AI) into more everyday shopping tasks, from finding products in a photo to picking up where shoppers left off online.

In a Sept. 8 blog post, the retailer highlighted several AI-powered shopping features it has rolled out since 2025. These include Photo Search, which lets shoppers upload images to find similar products, along with tools that summarize customer reviews, surface past purchases for reordering and bring shoppers back to items they recently viewed.

The update comes as Target puts more leadership behind its AI strategy. The retailer recently appointed Chandhu Nair as its first chief AI officer, effective Aug. 24. During Target’s quarterly earnings call last month, CEO Michael Fiddelke said Nair would help the company “accelerate how we harness the power of AI to create better guest experiences and unlock new capabilities across our business.”

Target is No. 5 in the Top 1000 Database. The market research tool tracks North America’s largest online retailers, ranking them by annual ecommerce sales and more.

Target is also No. 54 in Digital Commerce 360’s all-new AI Rankings. That set of rankings is available in the Top 1000 Pro with AI Database.

Target adds photo search and AI review summaries

Photo Search, the newest of Target’s AI tools, launched in August in the Target app.

Shoppers can tap the camera icon in the search bar, then upload or snap a photo to find similar products “without needing to describe them in words,” the company said.

Meanwhile, AI Review Insights tackles a different shopping task: sorting through dozens or even hundreds of customer reviews online.

Launched in June, the AI tool identifies a product’s commonly discussed attributes and organizes customer feedback into themes, helping shoppers focus on “the information that matters most to their purchase decision,” Target said. For example, the tool could group activewear reviews around topics such as comfort, fit, stretch and breathability.

Target said early results show Review Insights is boosting conversion and add-to-cart activity while reducing what it calls “decision fatigue,” though it did not share specific figures.

Neither of the features is unique to Target. Amazon, for example, has offered photo-based product search through Amazon Lens and AI-generated summaries of customer reviews for several years.

Target leverages AI for repeat purchases

Target is also using AI to simplify repeat purchases. Available through the app’s main navigation, its Buy Again tool surfaces a user’s past purchases, frequently ordered items and relevant deals based on previous shopping behavior. A shopper could pull up a recent grocery order, for example, and quickly add staples such as milk, bread or paper products to a new cart.

After launching Buy Again last year, Target said it has improved the tool’s recommendations and deal selection. The retailer said the experience has delivered “double-digit conversion growth year-over-year, while driving demand in categories like food and beverage.”

Meanwhile, Continue Shopping takes a similar approach to unfinished purchases. Using AI-powered personalization, the feature brings shoppers back to products they recently viewed while also surfacing alternatives and offers across Target’s homepage, My Target and search results. Since launching last fall, Target told Digital Commerce 360 that it is “driving double-digit conversion rates and incremental add-to-carts.”

Target expands AI shopping push

The tools are part of Target’s broader push into AI-driven commerce. On the company’s Q2 earnings call on Aug. 19, chief merchandising officer Cara Sylvester said Target had added AI-powered teacher and college wish lists, along with more personalized content on the app’s home screen.

She said total wish-list creations were up more than 50% from a year earlier, while the number of items added to those lists more than doubled. Conversion across Target’s key back-to-school pages also increased nearly 20%, she said.

Beyond its own app and website, Target is also looking at how shoppers can reach the retailer through outside AI platforms. Fiddelke said Target has partnered with OpenAI, Google Gemini and others as it explores agentic commerce.

Traffic to Target from external AI platforms remains small overall, he said, though its growth rate is more than 3.5 times that of the industry compared with a year ago.

Shipt launches Ask Shipt assistant

Target-owned Shipt is also rolling out its own AI shopping tool, adding another layer to the retailer’s push into conversational commerce. On Sept. 9, the same-day delivery service introduced Ask Shipt in its app and on Shipt.com.

Shipt, which Target acquired in 2017, describes Ask Shipt as an AI assistant that can turn prompts, recipes and meal photos into a shopping cart. Shoppers can describe what they need, and the assistant identifies relevant products and builds a cart. Users can then review, swap or edit its suggestions before checkout.

“Ask Shipt brings people-centric AI directly into the shopping journey, helping members move from inspiration to a personalized cart in moments,” said Katie Stratton, Shipt’s chief growth and strategy officer, in a statement.

Stratton said the tool works across Shipt’s marketplace of more than 100 retailer partners.

The launch comes as Shipt experiments with other conversational entry points. The company said it recently enabled shopping through ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude.

Shipt is also preparing to launch Shared Lists, which will let multiple users contribute to the same shopping list in real time. The feature can then convert the list into a cart with a single click.

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