Retailers Use AI to Improve Online Recommendations for Shoppers

He credits the gains to advances in smart software. Rather than asking customers to browse through the entire catalog of mugs, he says, algorithms, artificial intelligence and troves of data "are doing the work behind the scenes." Since the coronavirus outbreak, online retailers like Wayfair, Etsy Inc. ETSY 3.99% and Pinterest Inc. PINS -0.97% are ratcheting up efforts to leverage data from a surge in e-commerce to get better at helping customers find what they are looking for--even when they don't know what that is. To do that, these Web-only stores are supercharging search-and-recommendation engines by feeding data into sophisticated algorithms, building predictive models with a level of accuracy unimaginable just a few years ago. Not all of the capabilities are new--algorithms have been around for decades.