Thomas Orthgiess, chief product officer for Cazoo, joined AM to explain how search habits are changing in the age of AI and how dealers can make their stock stand out.
This video interview was completed for Innovation Week 2026, hosted by AM. Orthgiess spoke as a representative of Cazoo, the headline sponsor of the event.
AM Innovation Week runs from September 21 to 25 to examine which technologies are delivering measurable results for dealerships.
Across five days, AM will examine how innovation can reduce costs, improve conversion, strengthen customer retention and create new revenue, while also questioning when technology adds unnecessary expense and complexity.
AI: your administrative copilot
The first topic of discussion revolved the time that administrative jobs take to complete, and how that can affect other aspects of a business. “I think the whole process from getting a car photographed, describing it, and everything, which is I think taking a lot of time from our customers,” Orthgiess says, before mentioning how useful AI can be for streamlining these processes.
“The photos taken by humans can then be enhanced, turned into videos and prepared for social media using AI.” Orthgiess goes on to say that AI can also be used for “extracting the specs, extracting a description, things like that, and then basically getting this into a draft that user human can review.”
He also mentions that Cazoo is working on tool to help streamline the administrative aspects of selling cars. On this topic, he says the intention of these tools is to “add value and take out process steps that are very manual today.”
AI data and lead handling
Another area where AI can be of use is with handling large quantities of data and leads that may otherwise go to waste. Tackling the influx of new data streams, Orthgiess says that AI is of use here and says that its strength are “going through data, making sense of data, and then in a conversation guided by a human, bringing that to really, let’s say, concrete, actionable, reasonable kind of conclusions.”
The same is true of AI’s role in handling leads. Orthgiess says there are “two areas where we see AI also helping our customers. In managing leads, but also then converting those leads into actual sales.”
He goes on to talk about how they can help with summarising calls, extracting key details and offering AI agents that are able to talk calls after business hours or on occasions where there’s nobody to take calls.
Research, search filters still essential
On the topic of changing search habits, Orthgiess said there was still a place away from AI search for consumers. “I’m a little bit more reserved on that in the sense of I think consumers have always done you know their homework,” he said.
“Once they narrow their search down, once they understand what kind of make models like will fit to their needs, I think that’s where then where they still then come down to make model view and are open to use filters,” he adds.
Orthgiess agrees that AI search can be more conversational and that is a useful tool for customers, but concluded saying “my view is the more you continue on your journey, the more likely you are to come back to a more make model kind of view and work with filters, because they’re still straightforward.”
This issue will be explored further during AM’s free webinar, Identifying the innovations that count, at 2pm on Thursday, 24 September.
Our expert panel will examine how dealership leaders can distinguish technology that produces a meaningful return from tools that merely add another layer to an already crowded technology stack.
Reserve your place for the AM Innovation Week webinar now and follow AM throughout Innovation Week as we examine innovation in marketing, sales, aftersales and dealership culture.