4 ways AI is likely to change furniture retail in 2026

HIGH POINT — Artificial intelligence-related tools left no corner of the furniture industry untouched in 2025. They reshaped how products are marketed, merchandised, described and delivered to consumers, and those shifts are expected to accelerate in the year ahead.

Jake Freedman, founder of Dovr Media, a Shopify solutions provider for furniture and mattress retailers, recently spoke with sister publication Furniture Today about what he sees on the horizon as AI capabilities continue to mature.

The thrust of his advice for the industry is straightforward: from generative search tools to agentic purchasing, Freedman says the biggest changes that companies should track are not theoretical; they are practical considerations spurred by seismic shifts that are already underway.

Leveling the playing field

One of the most immediate impacts of AI, Freedman said, is its ability to democratize tools that were once reserved for only the largest retailers with deep pockets and large teams.

“Historically, things like deep customer segmentation, advanced SEO, content creation, and ecommerce optimization were only accessible to billion-dollar retailers,” Freedman said. “AI has completely democratized that.”

In the past, executing those strategies often required dozens of employees working manually on content, data cleanup, and optimization. “I remember putting together a team of 20 people just to handle search engine optimization for a billion-dollar retailer,” he said. “Only companies of that size could afford to do it properly.”

Today, those same capabilities can be deployed far more efficiently. “We’re seeing labor go down and results go up, dramatically,” Freedman said. “Capabilities that used to require massive teams are now accessible regardless of a retailer’s size.”

That shift, he added, has allowed smaller, Main Street retailers to operate with many of the same digital advantages as Top 100 chains, often on the same platforms.

Redefining product discovery

Perhaps the most disruptive change, Freedman said, is how consumers are discovering furniture online. Traditional search engine optimization is no longer enough on its own.

“The old model was ‘sofa near me,’” he said. “The new model is someone going to ChatGPT or another language learning model and asking, ‘What’s the best sofa for a family of four, under $2,000, with a tufted back?’ That’s a fundamentally different query.”

This shift has given rise to generative engine optimization, or GEO, which focuses on making products discoverable through AI-powered tools rather than just search engines.

“We’ve actually been doing generative engine optimization for about a year and a half,” Freedman said. “What’s changed is the speed and the depth required.”

While roughly 70% of traditional SEO best practices still apply, GEO demands richer product data. “Now it’s critical to include lifestyle use cases, feature context, and metadata alignment across descriptions, tags, headers, and even annotations on product imagery,” he said.

The payoff can be significant. “We’re seeing up to a 20% lift in findability when you combine traditional Google results with ChatGPT indexing,” Freedman said.

Agentic commerce changes the game

Beyond discovery, AI is beginning to influence the buying process itself through agentic commerce, AI tools that can act on a consumer’s behalf.

“We’re already seeing shoppers purchase directly through AI agents,” Freedman said.

Using tools such as ChatGPT’s agent mode, consumers can now authorize an AI to complete a transaction for them. “If you’re a paid ChatGPT user, the agent can actually complete a purchase on your behalf using Stripe Link,” he explained. “Because Shopify also uses Stripe, the transaction can happen seamlessly.”

For retailers, that means AI is no longer just influencing decisions; it can execute them. “Any Dovr-powered Shopify site today can already be purchased from directly through ChatGPT,” Freedman said.

He added that the pace of adoption has been striking. “This agentic commerce technology has only been live for about six months and is already transacting hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Prioritizing privacy

As AI becomes more embedded in commerce, concerns around data privacy — both enterprise and consumer — are growing. Freedman said those concerns are valid but often misunderstood.

“Enterprise data on reputable platforms is siloed,” he said. “One retailer’s information is not being shared with another.”

Freedman also emphasized the need for discipline. “It’s critically important for organizations to follow best practices in their AI strategy, especially around password hygiene and not sharing sensitive materials,” he said.

Freedman also pointed out that AI providers have strong incentives to protect trust. “AI companies understand that violating enterprise trust would destroy their own business,” he said. “That’s not how this ecosystem survives.”

Freedman said AI should be seen less as a replacement for human decision-making and more as a force multiplier, a view that Dovr is keeping in mind.

“We’re not reinventing the wheel,” he said. “We’re just building a better mousetrap.”

And as retailers prepare for 2026, he said success will hinge on how well they apply the technology, not just whether they adopt it.

“The real value comes from execution and consistency,” he cautioned. “AI doesn’t replace that; it amplifies the (need for) it.”

Tomas Kauer - Moderator https://www.tomaskauer.com/