From TIME · · 1m
Fiona Tan's AI overhaul at Wayfair
Wayfair's CTO uses generative AI to help shoppers find what they want among 30 to 40 million products.
In brief
Wayfair's CTO uses generative AI to help shoppers find what they want among 30 to 40 million products. Generative AI can solve the paradox of choice by making massive product catalogs navigable rather than overwhelming. Originally reported by TIME.
Wayfair's catalog problem
Wayfair sells 30 to 40 million products across furniture, appliances, and home goods. The challenge is helping shoppers find what they want without drowning in options.
“Anything and everything that you could possibly want should be there. But at the same time, you don't want to have to look through all of that.”
AI cleans up messy data
Tan has pushed generative AI to enrich product catalogs, clean up contradictory supplier data, and generate more useful product information across the platform.
Visual shopping experiences
Wayfair uses generative AI to create visual experiences that let consumers see products together in realistic room settings before buying.
Google partnership on commerce
Wayfair teamed up with Google to help develop its Universal Commerce Protocol, which was unveiled in January 2026.
ChatGPT shopping integration
Wayfair partnered with OpenAI to enable agentic shopping directly within ChatGPT, letting customers browse and buy without leaving the chat interface.
The one thing
Generative AI can solve the paradox of choice by making massive product catalogs navigable rather than overwhelming.
