July 2026 — AI & Ecommerce news.
What changed, as it happens.
Tracked daily from primary sources. The items below are what we're watching for clients right now.
Lantern launches a platform that scores how AI shopping portals read your catalog
Lantern released a platform that uses AI agents to predict how AI shopping portals interpret a merchant’s product catalog, flag visibility constraints, and apply fixes, with an “agent-readiness score” to gauge how well a catalog surfaces in AI-driven shopping. It’s part of a fast-growing category built around making product data legible to AI buyers.Practical Ecommerce →
Alli AI ships a WordPress plugin that serves AI crawlers a pre-rendered HTML copy
Alli AI launched a WordPress plugin that serves AI crawlers a fully pre-rendered HTML version of each page — while human visitors see the normal site — and auto-deploys structured data site-wide. It’s a bet that AI-crawler-specific rendering is worth the parallel-version maintenance Google’s own team keeps cautioning against.Practical Ecommerce →
BigCommerce/PayPal survey: shoppers want AI to help them discover, not buy for them
A BigCommerce and PayPal survey of ~3,000 consumers across the US, UK, and Australia found about two-thirds interested in agentic shopping tools — but with a strong preference for AI handling product discovery rather than autonomous purchasing. Fraud protection and purchase confirmation topped the list of trust requirements.BigCommerce →
Square launches ChatGPT and Claude integrations so AI can order from its sellers
Square released a ChatGPT app and a Claude plugin that let AI platforms discover Square sellers and place orders, starting with US food-and-beverage merchants and with no added marketplace commission. Square is also working with Amazon on an Alexa+ integration and sits on the AAIF, W3C, and UCP standards groups — another platform wiring its catalog into AI checkout.Digital Commerce 360 →
Klaviyo moves its marketing and service AI agents to public beta
Klaviyo pushed two AI agents to public beta: Composer, a campaign builder, and Customer Agent, a service-automation tool, with real-time customer data shared between them. Early-access brands include Spanx and Dermalogica.Digital Commerce 360 →
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