It was hard to keep up with all the various BFCM data rolling in last week. Trying to distinguish what Shopify said versus what Adobe said versus what Salesforce said to get a complete picture felt like a tall order in a short amount of time.

As the dust settles, though, one thing is clear: Everyone wanted to participate in the AI story.

Adobe, which saw $11.8B in transactions on Black Friday alone, said AI-driven traffic was up 805% year-over-year. Salesforce, which reported servicing more than $336B from November 25 to December 1, said agentic customer service conversations increased by 55% over the previous week. And Shopify, which was quiet on sharing how consumer AI impacted the $14.6B its merchants did, came out this week and just hammered home the AI narrative at Editions.

And the AI story isn’t just that it exists. Adobe said visitors who came from an AI chatbot were 38% more likely to make a purchase.

As someone who has said that it might take longer for ChatGPT to make its way into consumer’s browsing and buying habits, I find this datapoint interesting.

• Are we adopting way faster than expected?

• Is 805% growth more a function of hardly any usage last year?

• Will this persist?

The news on AI, especially from a consumer market perspective, seems to constantly shift. OpenAI has declared a “code red” to improve ChatGPT, because Google’s Gemini is challenging ChatGPT’s position in the market.

If the presumed winner actually loses—or just doesn’t win by as wide a margin—what about this year’s AI <> BFCM narrative actually sticks?

Maybe there’s a lesson here.

As the tech grounds continue to shift below our feet, maybe the best approach is to skip trying to find the right attachment angle and continue focusing on the core of what makes commerce go: People buy products (and into brands), they talk about them, and, as they do, more people buy. Everything else is just way for those things to happen.