Michaels formally launched Ask Mike on July 21, 2026, an AI-powered shopping assistant built with Google Cloud's Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience that had already been live since May and generated nearly 75,000 conversations before the company made the announcement public.
The 75,000 conversations figure covers roughly six to eight weeks of availability before the formal launch, according to the press release.
More than 60% of those interactions were focused on product discovery, shoppers describing what they want to make or celebrate and receiving curated product recommendations rather than search results to filter.
