The holiday shopping wars have sparked an AI arms race — the retail industry's biggest technology experiment since the dawn of e-commerce.

Why it matters: Retailers and tech giants — from Target and Walmart to Amazon, Google and Meta — are rushing to deploy smart shopping assistants that promise to help consumers find gifts faster, spend smarter and even complete purchases.

The big picture: The same generative tech that powers chatbots is now shaping everything from product discovery to in-store navigation — testing whether consumers are ready to let algorithms do the gifting. • It's turning 2025 into the first true AI holiday season, experts tell Axios. • Traffic from AI-powered chat tools is projected to surge 520% year over year, and could spike to more than 1,000% on peak shoppin

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