In October 2025, the European Commission unveiled the Apply AI Strategy—a sweeping policy framework aimed at accelerating the adoption and integration of artificial intelligence across strategic sectors in the European Union, including e-commerce. As part of this initiative, 2026 is anticipated to become a turning point: key two-pronged regulatory changes are scheduled, with guidelines on high-risk AI system classification and the interplay of the AI Act with sector-specific legislation slated for publication in the first quarter, followed by the operational launch of important horizontal frameworks like the Digital Fairness Act later in the year. These moves set the stage for a new set of compliance norms, transparency requirements, and technological standards as AI-powered personalization becomes endemic within online shopping environments.This regulatory trajectory is underpinned by the EU AI Act, which comes into force in August 2026, and aims to foster the development of trustworthy, transparent, and non-manipulative AI systems in consumer-facing applications. The evolving landscape is characterized by a layered approach: existing statutes such as the Digital Services Act, Data Act, and soon-to-be-enacted Digital Fairness Act (DFA) each address different facets of digital consumer protection and fair design in ecommerce, but the arrival of the DFA is set to consolidate and harmonize these requirements, ensuring a coherent standard for AI-driven personalization, recommendations, and dynamic pricing across digital retail and beyond.### AI-Driven Personalization in E-commerce: The 2026 EU Regulatory LandscapeThe momentum behind AI-powered personalization in European e-commerce is shaped by twin imperatives: the pursuit of optimized customer engagement and the strictures of an increasingly coordinated regulatory framework. Algorithm-driven recommendations, tailored search, individualized content, and dynamic pricing models are now foundational to modern digital retail. However, the EU’s regulatory overhaul means these technologies must be deployed in compliance with both sectoral and horizontal legal standards aimed at fairness, transparency, and consumer autonomy.For digital retailers, key developments include:- The classification of certain personalization and recommendation algorithms as "high-risk" under the AI Act if they present significant risks to consumer rights or wellbeing, thereby triggering stringent compliance obligations around transparency, accountability, and auditability.- The DFA’s design guidance, which regulates not just the output of AI-driven personalization (what is displayed), but also the method of presentation (user interface, consent obtainment, and avoidance of manipulative design patterns).### Implications for Product Feeds and Cataloguing StandardsAI personalization, to operate effectively and compliantly, places new demands on the underlying data infrastructure of e-commerce:- The accuracy, granularity, and real-time updating of product feeds become paramount. Personalization algorithms require robust, highly-structured data inputs to deliver relevant recommendations, optimize search, and enable adaptive merchandising.- Enhanced cataloguing standards are driven by the regulatory demand for transparency. Retailers must ensure that product data—attributes, images, variants, and provenance—meet completeness and clarity thresholds, enabling consumers to make informed decisions and regulators to audit AI outputs for fairness or bias.- The DFA’s emphasis on non-manipulative practices puts the burden on e-commerce operators to clearly disclose when recommendations are algorithm-driven and to provide meaningful explanations for automated outcomes, anchoring cataloguing and feed management squarely in the domain of consumer rights.### Product Card Quality, Completeness, and Speed-to-MarketThe intersection of AI and new regulatory frameworks impacts product information management at multiple levels:- The quality and completeness of product detail pages (PDPs) become not just a matter of conversion optimization but also of compliance. Personalized overlay content—such as dynamic messaging, ratings, or comparative offers—must be accurate, non-deceptive, and auditable.- Rigorous data standards accelerate the speed with which new products can be onboarded into digital channels; however, they also raise the bar for minimum viable product data, with automated validation and enrichment powered by AI-enabled no-code platforms.- End-to-end traceability and explainability for personalization outcomes require new forms of catalog metadata, enabling operators to track why and how certain products are promoted or recommended.### The Rise of No-Code and AI Automation2026’s regulatory ecosystem incentivizes the adoption of no-code and AI automation tools that can ensure compliance by design:- No-code platforms enable rapid adjustments to personalization logic, consent flows, and UI elements in response to evolving regulatory guidelines without protracted engineering cycles.- Automated content generation, validation, and enrichment processes become mainstream, enabling retailers to maintain high standards of product data quality and compliance at scale, while also supporting multi-lingual and cross-market operations.### Impact on Assortment Expansion and SpeedA data-rich, AI-driven personalization framework can theoretically increase the speed at which assortment expansions are operationalized: automated product tagging, content enrichment, and attribute harmonization allow new SKUs to be onboarded, localized, and made searchable or recommendable within hours, not days. However, these efficiencies must be balanced against compliance checks—a point emphasized by the new EU standards. Failure to ensure data quality, auditability, or transparency can expose retailers to regulatory penalties or reputational risk, particularly in cases involving automated pricing, cross-border recommendations, or “profiling” of sensitive consumer groups.### Unresolved Challenges and Industry PreparednessDespite the granularity of forthcoming regulation, gaps persist in both interpretation and enforcement. Sector experts note that the AI Act, for example, currently offers minimal obligations for most customer-facing personalization tools unless they demonstrably manipulate or harm users. The DFA seeks to fill these gaps, but its final scope and operationalization remain subjects of debate among policymakers and industry stakeholders. Notably, the regulatory threshold for what constitutes “manipulative” personalization or unfair dynamic pricing is still evolving—a challenge for product teams and compliance leads.Retailers are now advised to undertake comprehensive design audits, reviewing not just algorithmic logic, but also user interface elements, consent mechanisms, and transparency features. Proactive adaptation—such as eliminating default opt-ins, ensuring user-friendly ways to understand and control personalization, and maintaining rigorous documentation of AI system behavior—will define the new baseline for operational excellence and risk mitigation.### Strategic Considerations for E-commerce and Content InfrastructureThe trajectory toward a harmonized European digital market with robust AI personalization capabilities—and strict fairness and compliance obligations—presents both an opportunity and a constraint.To remain competitive and compliant, e-commerce operators and SaaS providers must:- Invest in content infrastructure that prioritizes data quality, audit trails, and explainability.- Leverage no-code and AI-driven tools to maintain agility in product listing and personalization processes.- Monitor ongoing regulatory developments, particularly the operational details of the AI Act, DFA, and subsequent guidelines.- Revisit dynamic pricing strategies and personalized marketing logic to ensure fairness—not just in legal terms, but also in line with evolving consumer expectations of trust and agency.As the new legal frameworks mature, the competitive advantage will favor those organizations able to deliver deeply personalized shopping experiences in a manner that is demonstrably fair, transparent, and trustworthy. The regulatory changes of 2026 are thus not merely a compliance hurdle, but a catalyst for the next evolution of European e-commerce infrastructure.For further reading on upcoming compliance challenges and best practices, see Inside Privacy and Goodwin Law.***From a NotPIM perspective, this regulatory shift underscores a critical need for robust product data management. The emphasis on data quality, transparency and explainability, directly impacts how retailers manage their product catalogs and power AI-driven personalization. NotPIM offers a no-code solution that allows e-commerce businesses to streamline critical data processes, enabling them to meet compliance standards by enriching product data, validating feeds, and ensuring accurate cataloguing, all while maintaining agility. This helps businesses remain competitive in an evolving European market. By using a **product feed** and following the recommendations in this article, you can improve compliance. NotPIM also helps to solve **data integration challenges** and improve product data accuracy. Maintaining this data is vital, and the **creating a product page** is an important part of the process. For those preparing the quality and structure of their data, have a look at our **sample feed** resources.