Why GenAI Usage Didn't Spike on Black Friday 2025

The assumption going into Black Friday 2025 was simple: if consumers were already leaning on ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude to research purchases, the biggest shopping week of the year should push GenAI usage even higher. Our UK clickstream data says otherwise. Across the Black Friday week itself, AI platform usage barely moved, and in some measures, it went backwards.

A Surprising Stagnation

During the week containing Black Friday (commencing November 24), weekly users to major GenAI platforms fell 0.4% and weekly visits slipped 0.1%. Widening the lens to the full four-day sales window, from Black Friday through Cyber Monday, growth was still muted: users up just 1.2%, visits up 3.3%. For a category that has been posting double-digit monthly growth for most of the year, flat is effectively a contraction.

Workers Swapped Tabs, Not Tools

The likely explanation sits in how GenAI is actually used day to day in the UK: predominantly as a weekday, working-hours productivity tool. During Black Friday week, that productivity took a hit.

That pattern didn't break so much as get overridden: UK workers appear to have closed their AI tab and opened a retailer's site directly. As GenAI traffic stalled, eCommerce visits climbed through standard business hours, with major platforms like Amazon among the clearest beneficiaries of that swap.

The 'Early Bird' Research Phase

GenAI wasn't absent from the shopping season altogether: it just did its work earlier. eCommerce-adjacent activity on AI platforms picked up in the weeks leading into Black Friday, consistent with consumers using AI to shortlist products and build wishlists in early-to-mid November, well before the deals actually went live.

Taken together, the data points to a clear boundary on where GenAI currently sits in the shopping journey. It's a research and productivity layer, not yet a real-time transactional assistant: when it comes time to actually buy, UK consumers are still going straight to the retailer.