How Google Aims to Transform Shopping with AI

Google’s shopping experience is getting an AI overhaul.

The search leader on Tuesday announced a suite of updates aimed at helping the masses who collectively shop across Google more than 1 billion times a day find the products they’re seeking at the best prices.

The new features include an AI-powered guide that gives shoppers relevant information about products, like what to look for when choosing the best puffer jacket; a personalised shopping feed that uses a customer’s past activity to show them items and information Google thinks will be of interest; and tools to help find the best deals on products and brands. They will begin rolling out to US users over the next weeks and will expand to other markets over time.

Lilian Rincon, Google’s vice president of product for Shopping, called it a major step change for Google Shopping. “Right now very much feels like it did in 2009, when we were shifting from desktop to mobile and it was very evident that everybody needed to move to mobile,” she said.

Google has worked to incorporate generative AI more heavily into its search experience since last year, with shopping being one area the company said AI had the potential to transform. In that belief Google looks to have company. Brands have begun using the large language models underlying tools such as ChatGPT to revamp the search bars on their retail sites or power experimental chatbots that act like store sales associates, or at least attempt to.

The hope is that AI will drive a shift from technology simply giving shoppers access to products and information — the immense volume of which can be overwhelming — to sifting through and editing that information for them.

Rincon described the new Google Shopping as more “assistive,” and given the vast reach of Google Shopping, the new experience is the largest example to date of the way generative AI could reshape how consumers find and buy products.

Shoppers might not mind the help. In the US, 60 percent of US consumers say making the right purchase decision requires more effort than it used to, according to Google. IBM found in a separate survey that 86 percent of consumers who hadn’t yet tried AI for shopping wanted to see how it could help them research products or get information.

Google’s new shopping experience marries the company’s shopping graph — its continually refreshed dataset of 45 billion product listings — with its new Gemini AI models. Along with providing AI-researched information, which can include elements like videos from YouTube and social media, it also offers recommendations for products.

In its new personalised feed, Google will use the data it already gathers on users to show options like similar styles of products to what they’ve browsed previously. It will also allow you to thumbs up or down items so you can see more products, or fewer, like those in the future.

Another unit will show the top deals for a user based on their brand preferences and browsing activity.

Nothing should change substantially for brands as they try to make sure their products appear in Google’s recommendations, according to Rincon. They should keep using Google’s merchant centre and ensure product information is up to date.

Though Rincon added that one element which could become more critical is user reviews, as Google tries to determine the best products for shoppers based on the information available.

“We really feel like we’re transforming the shopping experience in this world of AI,” Rincon said.