AI chatbots are now gatekeepers in the purchase funnel, and they can swing a consumer decision in either direction. A survey of more than 2,300 U.S. consumers by Exploding Topics, published via Semrush, found that 57.5% of AI users have decided not to buy something based on information from a chatbot, at nearly the same rate that the same population is being converted into buyers by organic AI recommendations.
How Widely Are Consumers Using AI Chatbots to Research Products?
Adoption is broad and accelerating. According to the Exploding Topics / Semrush survey, 65.01% of consumers have at least partially replaced Google searches with AI chatbots for product research. Nearly half (47.54%) of all consumers now occasionally consult a chatbot to check a company or seller before making a purchase decision.
- Roughly 1 in 5 consumers would choose an AI chatbot as their only product research tool if limited to one source
- 65.42% of AI users report consulting a chatbot for company information before committing to a purchase
- 81.24% of all consumers surveyed believe AI chatbots are capable of recommending the best brands and products
- Among weekly-or-more AI users, that belief figure climbs above 80%
These numbers indicate that a large and growing portion of the buying journey now runs through AI-generated responses, before a consumer ever lands on a brand’s website.
Do AI Chatbots Drive More Purchases or Block More?
Both, in significant numbers. The Exploding Topics / Semrush survey found that 57.51% of AI users have completed a purchase based on an AI recommendation, while 57.5% of the same group have also decided against a purchase because of chatbot information. Among consumers who actively use AI when shopping, 80.93% have at some point decided against a purchase based on AI guidance, and 42.81% have done so multiple times.
The mechanism that most reliably deters a purchase is review information. The survey found that 74.15% of all consumers would be at least somewhat less likely to buy a product if an AI chatbot flagged mixed or negative reviews. Among current AI users, that figure rises to 85.31%.
The conversion side is equally concrete. Among consumers who use AI at least several times per week, 80.45% have bought an AI-recommended product, and 54.95% have done so more than once. Across all consumers, 73.58% have bought a product based on an organic AI recommendation.
How Are Brands Being Discovered Through AI?
AI is functioning as a discovery channel for brands, not just a research filter. The Exploding Topics survey found that 59.27% of AI users have discovered a brand or product they had not previously heard of through a chatbot recommendation. More than a quarter (25.79%) say they have done so frequently.
This finding aligns with a separate Semrush buyer journey study from March, which found that 43% of consumers have discovered a new brand through an AI tool. The Exploding Topics survey puts the same figure at 43.14% across all consumers surveyed, including infrequent AI users.
Among consumers who actively use AI for product research, only 9.38% have never discovered a new product or brand from a chatbot recommendation.
Are Chatbot Ads a Reliable Shortcut to AI Visibility?
The data suggests paid placements inside chatbots carry meaningful risks. The survey found that 71.63% of consumers feel neutral or negative toward ads placed inside AI chatbots. A consumer’s opinion of a brand is slightly more likely to worsen than improve after seeing a chatbot ad for it.
This matters for brands considering chatbot ad spend as a quick fix for AI visibility gaps. The survey data points toward organic AI mentions, driven by content strategy and brand reputation signals, as generating more trust and more durable discovery effects than paid placements.
What This Means for AI-Search Visibility
Here is the simplest way to read this data: your brand already has a reputation inside AI chatbots, whether you actively built it or not.
Picture a potential customer asking ChatGPT or Gemini whether your product is worth buying. The chatbot assembles what it knows about you (reviews, comparisons, mentions from across the web) and delivers a confident summary. That summary is now influencing 57.5% of AI users strongly enough to stop a purchase. Your brand was not in the room when that happened.
This is the core implication Hingewise draws from the survey that the data itself does not name directly:
- Review signals are now a conversion issue, not just a reputation issue. If 74.15% of consumers will pull back the moment a chatbot surfaces mixed reviews, then the quality, recency, and reach of review content is affecting sales outcomes upstream of any website visit. That changes where review management sits in a marketing budget.
- Brand discovery through AI is not the same as brand control. Being mentioned by a chatbot once is not the same as being consistently mentioned with accurate, favorable framing. A brand can appear in AI responses while being described incompletely, in an outdated context, or alongside caveats that the brand itself would dispute, and none of that shows up in standard traffic or conversion analytics.
The Hingewise view: the survey data marks a structural shift in where brand trust is formed. A significant part of the purchase decision is now being made inside a conversation with an AI, before a consumer clicks anything. The competitive position that holds over time is not just appearing in AI responses; it is shaping what those responses say.
What to Check Before Your Brand Loses an AI-Assisted Sale
- Run a manual test: ask ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity how your brand compares to two direct competitors. Note the tone, accuracy, and whether review sentiment is mentioned.
- Audit your review presence: check whether AI responses about your brand surface review information, and whether that information reflects your current standing.
- Identify which product or category questions your brand does and does not appear in when consumers search via AI.
- Verify that your most credible content (reviews, press coverage, detailed product pages) is accessible to AI crawlers (automated bots that AI systems use to read and index web content).
- Benchmark your Share of Model (how often AI systems name your brand relative to competitors) against two or three rivals using the same set of prompts. This gives a usable baseline before making changes.
- Evaluate chatbot ad spend separately from organic AI visibility efforts. The survey data suggests consumers weight these differently in terms of trust.
The Exploding Topics survey covered more than 2,300 U.S. consumers. How these dynamics play out across non-English-speaking markets and among older age groups remains largely undocumented, and is likely where the next wave of materially different findings will emerge.
Sources: Exploding Topics / Semrush Blog; Semrush buyer journey study, March.
Lam Nguyen · Hingewise
This article was drafted with AI assistance from the sources cited above and checked against them before publishing. The "What this means for AI-search visibility" section is Hingewise's editorial analysis, built on the frameworks and positions we use in our GEO work. How we work: Editorial policy.