The race to own AI shopping

Ecommerce companies may soon compete not only for shoppers, but also to “own” the AI through which those shoppers buy. Conceptually, the idea is not new. Competing for customers has long included competing for attention and proxies. Take search engine optimization. Ecommerce marketers work hard to rank in search engine result pages to win a shopper. The search engine is a proxy.
Generative engine optimization seeks similar visibility, but another layer of AI shopping is emerging.