Tech companies have spent the past year teaching AI how to shop. Google has introduced an AI-powered shopping cart, Meta’s Muse can search for products and prepare purchases for approval, and OpenAI’s new ChatGPT Wallet lets eligible users pay for purchases through an AI agent. Adobe expects traffic from AI tools to U.S. retail sites to jump 130% this holiday season.
Americans, it turns out, aren’t nearly as eager to hand over their gift lists.
Nearly three-quarters of Americans, or 72%, say they don’t plan to use AI tools for holiday shopping this year, up from 49% in 2025, according to a new Bank of America survey. The 23-percentage-point jump suggests a gap between the industry’s ambitions for AI shopping and what consumers say they want from it.
The reasons shoppers gave suggest that when it comes to gifts, efficiency isn’t the point. Among those who don’t plan to use the technology, 42% cited personal or ethical reasons, 37% said it takes away the personal aspect of gift giving, and 26% said they don’t trust AI recommendations.
Lora Monfared, head of consumer credit card products at Bank of America, said shoppers may be growing more selective about when AI is worth using, especially as they keep a closer eye on holiday spending.
“Some of last year’s curiosity about AI may also have worn off, and we could be seeing a bit of AI fatigue,” Monfared told Fortune. “Gift shopping is personal, and people want to feel good about what they’re giving.”
The survey found that 87% of Americans expect to spend the same amount or less on holiday shopping this year, while 63% said they base their spending strictly on their own budgets rather than what friends or family spend. Monfared said that same approach may be shaping how consumers use AI and social media to shop.
Colleen Kirk, a professor of marketing and management at New York Institute of Technology, said the hesitation may have less to do with what AI can do than what shoppers feel they lose by using it.
“Gift giving is a very personal act, and gifts, especially to close family and friends, are given from the heart,” Kirk told Fortune.
In her research studying consumer psychology, she has found that consumers can feel guilty when they use AI to write heartfelt messages because the words no longer feel entirely their own. She believes the same concern can extend to gift giving, where the time and thought spent choosing something for another person are part of what makes the gesture meaningful.
That effort creates what researchers call psychological ownership, or the feeling of having a personal stake in something. Kirk said browsing stores, comparing options online, and choosing a gift can make shoppers feel as though they’re giving part of themselves to someone else.
“Using AI can take away this sense of ownership,” she said. “It’s like the AI owns the process rather than me.”
That doesn’t mean shoppers are swearing off AI entirely—they’re just giving it the unglamorous jobs. The Bank of America survey found that 17% plan to use AI to compare prices or deals, 14% for gift ideas or inspiration, and 7% to write messages or cards. Respondents could select more than one use.
Bank of America said it asked the AI shopping question the same way in both years, though the survey only measures intentions, and those tend to get flexible in the last-minute scramble before Christmas. The bank doesn’t have data showing whether shoppers are actually using AI less.
Still, it’s an awkward moment for tech companies betting that shoppers will eventually trust AI to do more than recommend products, including making purchases on their behalf.
Kirk said AI may have a more natural place in the less personal parts of shopping, such as finding coupons, comparing prices, or buying groceries and household supplies. Those tasks can save consumers time and money without asking them to give up complete control over more meaningful purchases.
For gift shopping, she suggested consumers come up with their own ideas first, then turn to AI to help narrow their options. Research has found that people feel more ownership over an outcome when they generate their own ideas before using AI, she said.
And with holiday shopping competing for time that could be spent with family and friends, Kirk said some consumers may decide that letting AI handle the less personal tasks is a worthwhile trade-off.
“Consumers might just decide that it is worth it to give up a little bit of ownership of the process in exchange for getting more time for those special emotional connections with the humans they love,” Kirk said.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com