Google and Walmart Team Up for In-Chat Shopping with Gemini AI
On Sunday, Google revealed its intentions to improve the shopping features of its AI chatbot through partnerships with prominent retailers like Walmart, Shopify, and Wayfair, evolving the Gemini app into a dual role as both a virtual merchant and an assistant. Walmart and Google have announced that an instant checkout function will allow customers to make purchases from select businesses and through various payment providers, all without leaving the Gemini chat used to discover products. The announcement was made on the inaugural day of the National Retail Federation’s annual convention in New York. The impact of artificial intelligence on e-commerce and its implications for consumer behavior are expected to be the central themes of the three-day event.
“The transition from traditional web or app search to agent-led commerce represents the next great evolution in retail,” stated John Furner, Walmart’s incoming president and CEO, in a joint statement with Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. Google’s new AI shopping feature functions in this manner: when a customer asks about the essential gear for a winter ski trip, for example, Gemini will present items drawn from a participating retailer’s inventory. Customers who connect their Walmart and Gemini accounts will receive tailored recommendations based on their previous purchases, according to the statement.
Furthermore, any products selected for purchase via the chatbot may seamlessly integrate with their existing Walmart or Sam’s Club online shopping carts. In October, OpenAI and Walmart announced a partnership that would allow ChatGPT members to access an instant checkout feature for shopping almost all items on Walmart’s website, excluding fresh food. Google, OpenAI, and Amazon are engaged in a competitive race to create tools that facilitate AI-driven shopping experiences. These innovations aim to allow users to move effortlessly from browsing to purchasing within a single application, eliminating the need to navigate to a retailer’s website to complete a transaction. The rivalry between OpenAI and Google has escalated in recent months.
Before the recent holiday shopping season, OpenAI launched an instant checkout feature in ChatGPT, allowing users to buy products from select retailers and Etsy sellers directly within the app. Salesforce, a software company based in San Francisco, estimated that AI had an impact on USD 272 billion, or 20 percent, of all global retail sales during the holiday shopping season, in one way or another. Google has revealed that the AI-assisted shopping features in Gemini will be available exclusively to users in the United States at first, with intentions to broaden access internationally in the upcoming months.
