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On Oct. 1, OpenAI began rolling out virtual try-on inside ChatGPT's shopping results, TechCrunch reported. Users upload a selfie or full-body photo and see how a piece of clothing or an accessory might look on them.
That raises a fair question for small online stores. If a chatbot can dress a shopper from a selfie, does a shop still need its own AR setup?
The answer depends on what the shop sells. The feature TechCrunch describes generates images from photos. It doesn't place a bookshelf in a living room at true size, and for that job, the product itself needs a 3D file.
AR Shopping Market Estimated at $10.6 Billion in 2026
The Business Research Company puts the AR shopping market at $8.03 billion in 2025 and $10.59 billion in 2026. It forecasts $31.43 billion by 2030, a compound annual growth rate of 31.3%.
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The firm's September 2026 report names rising smartphone adoption as the main growth driver. Among the trends it tracks are AI-powered virtual try-on and web-based AR shopping platforms that run in a browser.
Shopify Ties 3D Product Content to a 94% Conversion Lift
Shopify first shared in 2020 that products with 3D or AR content converted 94% higher than products without it. The platform repeated the figure in a 2022 merchant update as the average lift for merchants who add 3D content. It's a platform-wide average, so no single store should read it as a promise.
Smaller brands may have the most to gain. AÂ 2022 Journal of Marketing study of an international cosmetics retailer found AR use in its app was associated with higher sales for less popular brands and pricier products. The findings are correlational, and the study covered try-on rather than room placement.
75% of Surveyed Snapchat Users Say AR Helps Them Find New Tech
In a 2025 study commissioned by Snapchat with two research partners, 75% of the platform's users agreed that AR features letting them visualize products help them discover new tech items. The survey covered more than 3,000 electronics shoppers ages 13 to 60 across five countries. Snapchat sells AR ad formats, so the source has a stake in the result.
The company's own example is a TV previewed on a shopper's wall. Here's the catch. The product photo is flat. For a phone to hang that TV on a real wall at the right size, it needs a 3D file of the TV, with geometry and textures built to real-world scale.
Producing that file has traditionally meant 3D modeling software and someone trained to use it. For a shop owner who photographs inventory on the kitchen table, a catalog of 150 products means 150 separate models before a single shopper taps the AR button.
Federal data shows the tilt. In the Census Bureau's Annual Business Survey covering 2017, 0.7% of U.S. firms reported using AR, but those firms employed 1.3% of workers, meaning adopters skewed larger. Use of newer business technologies rose with company size across every age group.
AI Image-to-3D Tools Now Build a GLB File From One Photo
AI has started chipping away at that step. Newer image-to-3D tools that turn a single product photo into an AR-ready model handle the modeling automatically. StockCake's AI 3D Creator, for example, takes an uploaded image and returns a GLB file with 2K textures. Background removal and mesh simplification for faster loading are both optional.
GLB is the single-file version of glTF, an open format used widely for 3D on the web and in mobile AR. Some devices expect a different format, so a conversion step may still apply. Results also depend on the source image: the tool's guidance says clear, well-lit shots with defined edges work best.
The short version: AR used to call for a 3D artist. Now it can start with a product photo.
Research Firm Tracks AR Content Creation Software as Its Own Segment
The Business Research Company lists AR content creation and management software among the market's software segments, alongside AI-powered try-on. Generative AI now shows up on both sides of the product page: in the selfie a shopper uploads and in the model a seller builds.
A small store can test the seller's side on a small scale. It can build models for its five best sellers and track conversion and return rates on those pages against its own baseline.
