Shopping is one of the primary tasks for which people use Google; in fact, people shop across Google properties 1 billion times every day, so it’s not surprising that, as AI capabilities rapidly advance, Google is bringing more and more of that functionality to the forefront in order to enhance the shopping experience on its platforms.
This week at Google’s annual I/O conference for developers, the company announced several new advances, including a more personalized multimodal AI search experience for shopping queries, agentic checkout capabilities and an enhancement to its virtual try-on tool that will allow users to see products on their own body.
“We have been on this journey of transforming shopping with AI over the last few years, and these [latest] announcements are about improving, with AI, everything from inspiration to consideration with the evolution of our virtual try-on technology, and at the end of the journey, purchasing [with] agentic checkout,” said Lilian Rincon, VP of Consumer Shopping Product at Google in a press briefing.
Rincon pointed out that having fresh, accurate product data is central to Google’s ability to do this well, and she shared that Google’s Shopping Graph (essentially its database of products) has now reached more than 50 billion product listings, 2 billion of which are refreshed with new information every hour.
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Here are the latest ways Google plans to take that data and create more inspiring, seamless shopping journeys for its users.
A More Visual, Conversational Experience with AI Mode in Search
Google is now bringing its most powerful AI search functionality to shopping queries with the new AI Mode shopping experience, which is beginning to roll out now for all U.S. users. Leveraging the latest capabilities of Google’s Gemini AI model, this advanced search functionality is designed to help customers browse for inspiration, think through considerations and narrow down products.
For example, a user can put in a query such as, “Rugs that will brighten a room with a light gray couch” in AI Mode. Search results will include information related to the query on the left, as well as an image-based, mosaic-style browsable list of available products on the right.
The conversation can be continued on the left-hand side of the search results; for example, if a user realizes they want to narrow their results to look for rugs that are easy to clean or kid-friendly, they can add that to the conversation. The right-hand product results pane will automatically be updated with products that fit the new criteria.
Ads are not part of the AI Mode search experience yet, but Rincon said that Google fully intends to experiment with sponsored listings in AI Mode, just as it has with its AI Overviews search results.
Google can Track Price Drops, and Now it will Buy the Product Too
When a user finds a product they are interested in buying, they can link out to the merchant’s site as they would have previously, but soon they will gain the ability to track price changes and empower Google to buy the product for them immediately when it falls within the desired price range. This new agentic checkout feature is an add-on to the existing Track Price capability, making it that much simpler for customers to jump on price drops as soon as they happen.
When a user selects “track price” on any product listing, they will set their preferred price and designate other options, such as color or size, like normal. What’s new? If they include G Pay payment information at the same time, when the product becomes available at the desired price, users will now have the option to simply tap “Buy for me” after confirming they want the product, and Google will complete the purchase for them on the merchant’s site using Google’s G Pay.
This agentic checkout feature will be rolling out to U.S. users in the coming months, and at the moment is only available with G Pay. Importantly, as resale continues to gain ground online, Rincon confirmed that price tracking will include secondhand versions of the items customers are looking for that are being sold by resellers. Rincon also confirmed that, at the moment, transactions will be conducted in guest mode, but the company is exploring ways for its agent to log in to merchants’ loyalty programs on behalf of users when making purchases.
Try Apparel on Your Own Body Virtually
Google has been steadily advancing its virtual try-on capabilities over the past two years to help shoppers imagine how apparel and beauty products might look on them, but the feature previously used models. Now, Google is testing out a new try-on technology that will allow users to virtually test out clothes on themselves by uploading a photo.
“One challenge that we’ve been focused on over the last few years is you see a product online, but you’re not sure how that product is going to look on you,” said Rincon at the press briefing. “Two years ago, we introduced virtual try-on that allows you to choose a model that represents you and then see what that product will look like on [that] model. But we’ve heard a lot from consumers, and also from merchants, that the thing everyone really wants is to be able to try something on yourself.”
According to Rincon, this technology is the first of its kind at the scale with which Google is deploying it. The technology is currently being tested out in Google’s Search Labs experience, which users can sign up for, and will eventually roll out to users more generally for searches in specific product categories.
At the moment, the technology works with shirts, pants, skirts and dresses. As users are shopping on Google, they can click the “try it on” icon on in select product listings. They then upload a full-length photo of themself and, within minutes, they can see exactly how the item would look on their body. Users also can save the images of items they’ve tried on to share with friends or compare different looks.
When asked at the press briefing if Google was aiming to deliver a “Clueless Closet experience” (if you don’t get the reference check out this quick video clip from the ’90s movie classic), Rincon said “we’re not calling it a Clueless Closet yet, because we are starting with one item at a time that you can try on, but doing that is definitely in our mind.”
