Search behavior is changing. Fast. Many shoppers are no longer typing short, rigid keywords and hoping for the best. They’re asking questions. They’re adding context. They’re refining as they go. In other words, they’re searching the same way they would talk to a shop assistant in a physical store, but online.

AI Mode is Empathy Platform’s answer to that shift: a conversational search experience designed specifically for e-commerce, built to understand longer, more human queries and turn them into relevant, actionable results.

Not as a replacement for keyword search, but as a natural evolution of it.

From keywords to conversations

Traditional keyword-based commerce search assumes that shoppers know exactly what they want and how to ask for it. Reality looks very different: shoppers explore; shoppers hesitate; shoppers change their minds.

Powered by the Empathy.ai (opens new window) technology, AI Mode introduces a conversational layer on top of the Empathy Platform’s existing search experience. It allows shoppers to express intent in their own words and refine it over time, instead of forcing everything into a complex keyword query.

With AI Mode, shoppers start with something vague like “acoustic guitar” and then add nuance: “I play almost every day, mostly classical, but I want to learn electric. I prefer something white.” And, that’s not a keyword. That’s a conversation.

AI Mode is built for these moments. It keeps context, understands how intent evolves, and helps translate that into results that align with the store’s catalog, just like a good in-store assistant would.

Unlike single-shot AI responses, AI Mode supports ongoing, multi-turn conversations. Shoppers can refine, correct, or expand their intent naturally, while the system maintains context throughout the interaction, without forcing them to restart or rephrase their search.

That’s why AI Mode doesn’t replace keyword search; it’s the natural next step. It extends the existing search experience with a conversational entry point designed for more complex and evolving intent.

How AI Mode fits into the search journey

To ease this natural shift in search behavior, AI Mode doesn’t live in isolation. It’s designed to work with the existing search flow, integrated directly into the commerce search experience for shoppers who need to go beyorn a single query.

Shoppers can access it in two main ways:

• From the AI Overview, generated after a traditional keyword search is run.
• Using the dedicated AI Mode entry point.

The initial flow is intentional to ease the learning curve while shoppers transition from keywords to conversations:

1. A shopper runs a natural language-based search.
2. They see standard results, plus an AI Overview summarizing search intent.
3. From there, they can dive deeper into a conversational experience.

Note that AI Mode does not replace the AI Overview feature; it extends it, allowing shoppers to move from a summarized intent into a deeper, conversational exploration when needed.

For more experienced shoppers, the AI Mode button is available at the top of the shopping experience, allowing them to go directly to conversational mode.

This mirrors how people already interact with search elsewhere, but adapted to e-commerce, where results must be explainable, merchandisable, and conversion-ready, regardless of how the search intent is formulated.

Every conversational interaction ultimately resolves into accurate search queries, ensuring that AI-driven discovery remains fully compatible with ranking rules, business logic, and merchandising strategies.

Built for people and brands, with privacy and sustainability by design

One of the key challenges Empathy faced in defining its conversational AI experience for e-commerce was balancing the shopping experience with business needs. While shoppers want fluid, human interactions, brands need consistency, control, and alignment with their identity and business goals.

AI Mode is designed to respect both while being aligned with Empathy’s principles on data privacy, governance, and sustainability. With AI Mode running on a private, in-house AI infrastructure, responses are reliable, grounded in the store’s actual catalog and search logic, and not just generic answers. And crucially, the experience can be shaped and configured by retailers themselves through the Playboard, from context and tone to priorities and exclusions. This means merchandisers can actively define how AI represents their store, shaping responses as deliberately as they would train an in-store assistant.

In other words, Empathy Platform AI Mode behaves less like any other generic search assistant and more like a digital extension of the store, as conventional commerce search has always been.

AI Mode as the final piece of the search puzzle

Empathy Platform’s search offering has never been a single feature. The search modes for a personalized and flexible search experience have evolved over time:

• Keyword search, for speed and precision.
• Hybrid and semantic search, to better capture meaning.
• AI-powered search features, to enhance relevance and discovery in a keyword search context.

And now, Conversational AI search comes in to close the circle. AI Mode brings these capabilities together into a more human interaction, without discarding what already works. Depending on business needs and shopper profiles, keyword and hybrid search may remain essential. AI Mode adds a new way in, one that aligns with how people naturally express needs today.

Stay tuned to the next publication to dive deeper into the key factors that make Empathy Platform conversational search unique.

Tech independence

AI Mode is built on Empathy’s in-house AI infrastructure. That means intelligence runs within Empathy’s own environment instead of relying on third-party AI services. The result is greater control over data, costs, availability, and long-term evolution. In practice, this fosters an AI search experience that can be adapted and improved over time without external constraints or unexpected dependencies.

Sustainability by design

Running AI responsibly also means considering its environmental footprint. By operating AI in controlled environments and aligning infrastructure decisions with sustainability goals, the environmental impact of AI-powered search can be better understood and reduced. This allows Empathy Platform to treat sustainability as an operational consideration, making energy use and efficiency part of how AI search is designed and evolved, and not an abstract promise.