Your customers, in growing numbers every year, are using AI to shop smarter. That means small businesses need to sell smarter—and new, readily available AI tools can help you do that.
This year, AI is emerging as a holiday shopper’s key tool for finding deals, researching products, and getting gift ideas, with 65% of consumers saying they will use AI for holiday shopping, according to e-commerce platform Shopify’s 2026 Global Holiday Retail Report.
A positive note for small businesses is that AI search and research often favors independent and niche brands. Among shoppers who frequently use AI tools, 71% said they are more likely to choose independent or niche brands, Shopify found.
Small businesses told Shopify that their top priorities in preparing for an AI holiday are creating AI-generated content (43%), making their businesses easy for AI search assistants to discover and recommend (40%), and employing AI-chatbots or virtual assistants.
Many small businesses, however, said they need to do more with AI in order to catch up to their competition and keep up with consumer trends.
The biggest tech companies such as Meta and Google, and startups like Pie, are recognizing the demand for AI tools tailored to small businesses and have launched solutions that can be put to work in time for the holiday season.
In addition, tech and e-commerce platforms that many small businesses already use, Shopify and Amazon, are offering expanded AI-powered capabilities.
The new tools typically are offered to small businesses for free, or at no cost for a trial period.
Here are new AI tools small businesses can tap into in time for Small Business Saturday and the holiday season:
Meta’s Muse for Small Business: SMBs can ask the AI assistant, ‘How can I improve?’
The 200 million small businesses who are already using Facebook, Instagram and the other social media platforms owned by parent company Meta can benefit from Meta’s new AI assistant for small businesses, Muse, even if they’ve waited until the last minute to make an AI plan for the holidays, Diana Doukas, Director for Economic Opportunity at Meta, told CO—.
Getting started can be as simple as downloading the Muse app and asking it to take a look at your business’ Facebook and Instagram homepages and posts and asking it, “How can I improve these?” Doukas said.
Muse can also connect with other tools businesses commonly use, such as Dropbox, Slack, Zoom, Shopify, and Intuit QuickBooks, and use them to complete tasks you assign to Muse.
Muse is designed to execute complex tasks like financial analysis and business plan development, but it can also handle more immediate Small Business Saturday-related work, such as creating social media content and ads to promote holiday sales and handling customer emails and flagging messages that need a quick response.
Muse for Small Business is free for limited usage and offers subscription plans of $20 a month for medium volume users, and $100 a month for maximum volume use.
Getting started can be as simple as downloading the Muse app and asking it to take a look at your business’ Facebook and Instagram homepages and posts and asking it, “How can I improve these?” Doukas said.
Google: Make your business more discoverable
Google this year began rolling out high-level agentic AI tools, offering them first to big businesses like Walmart and Home Depot and now expanding them to smaller businesses.
But it also made AI upgrades to the platforms it offers for free, platforms that virtually every small business on Main Street relies on to draw customers – Google Business Profile and Merchant Center.
The Business Profile is what shows up in Google Search and Google Maps. Merchant Center is a free digital dashboard that lets businesses upload information about their products and inventory so it can be discovered by Google Search or Google Shopping.
Businesses can now add more data and more detailed product descriptions to show up better in the conversational search questions shoppers are asking with AI.
It’s important for businesses to familiarize themselves with the new information they can enter in Merchant Center, and make sure their listing are up to date, Courtney Rose, Vice President, Retail at Google told CO—.
“The better your [Merchant Center] feed, the better your ability to be discoverable on Google.”
Equally important, according to small business marketing experts, is making sure your Google Business Profile has been updated with any relevant new information, such as extended holiday shopping hours.
Pie: Bringing AI to Main Street
Pie, a recently launched company that describes its goal as “bringing AI to Main Street,” offers tools small businesses can take advantage of, for free, in time for Small Business Saturday.
The company’s small business focus has attracted investment from Amex Ventures, the venture capital arm of American Express.
Co-founder Syed Ali previously worked at Square, the payments solution for small business, and Toast, the point-of-sale system for restaurants, and spent a lot of time talking to small business owners. He learned, he told CO—, that the top question small business owners ask is, “How can I attract new customers and grow sales?” He built Pie with that in mind.
Pie offers a free trial of its AI marketing platform that employs AI to use a business’s profile data on the site, sales data, and customer data to make digital advertising more effective.
It’s designed for businesses that previously were too small to afford digital advertising campaigns. Sixty-five percent of its customers today did not advertise previously.
Pie’s Growth Agent is designed to “find the right keywords, come up with the creative, come up with the copy and optimize it 24/7,” Ali said, allowing small businesses to advertise on social media and search more affordably.
Pie will run an AI marketing campaign for a small business for the first month for free, without any financial commitment or signing a contract. It also has a free tool on its website where Pie will look at your business profile and rank it and offer tips like, “You need to add some photos,” or “You need to update your store hours.”
Amazon and Shopify: New AI tools for e-commerce small businesses
The two e-commerce platforms used most widely by small businesses, Shopify and Amazon, have expanded their AI tools for this holiday season.
Sidekick, the AI agent Shopify launched in 2024, has added a number of enhancements including a ‘proactive recommendations’ feature that analyzes data such as sales, fulfillment, and customer engagement, and makes suggestions.
Shopify stores also can connect Sidekick to other third-party apps they’re using, and to an Apple Watch to get instant updates on sales. Canvas Store Design, added October 1, lets businesses update their store pages or create new ones by chatting with Sidekick.
Amazon announced several updates to its agentic AI tool, Seller Assistant, this fall. It can prep and monitor inventory, set up deals, and compare how products are selling compared to last year’s holiday season. It also can send alerts if it notices an issue—for example, when a product rating drops below 4 stars.
The new AI upgrades allow independent Amazon sellers to “lean on AI to stay ahead during the [holiday] rush,” David Forsythe, Vice President, North America Seller Business at Amazon, told CO—.
“Seller Assistant works around the clock, and with a seller’s permission, can help reason, plan, and take action across the business, from inventory to pricing,” he said.
CO— aims to bring you inspiration from leading respected experts. However, before making any business decision, you should consult a professional who can advise you based on your individual situation.
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