Google is rolling out new AI-powered shopping tools, including personalized product discovery via AI Mode, an agentic checkout that completes purchases using Google Pay, and a virtual dressing room that lets users try on clothes using their own photos.
Here's how shopping in AI Mode with agentic checkout works:
- You tell AI Mode you're looking for a cute travel bag.
- It shows you a browsable panel of images and product listings personalized to your tastes.
- From there you can narrow your options down to bags suitable for a trip to Portland, Oregon in May, and AI Mode will start a “query fan-out,” which means it runs several simultaneous searches to determine what makes a bag good for rainy weather and long journeys.
- It uses those criteria to suggest waterproof options with easy access to pockets.
- A new right hand panel dynamically updates with relevant products and images as you refine your search.
- Once you've made up your mind, tap “track price” on any product listing and choose your size, color, or any other options, and the amount you want to spend.
- Google will send you price drop notifications, and when you're ready to buy, you can click “buy for me” and Google will complete the purchase for you on the merchant's site with Google Pay.
The updates, which are powered by Gemini and Google's Shopping Graph, are launching in the US this summer.
Search Engine Land points out that Google's AI mode is not passing referral data, meaning it's impossible for website owners to know how many clicks they got from it.
Lily Ray, VP of SEO Strategy and Research at Amsive, said:
“Google does NOT want us having access to traffic data for AI Mode, or AI Overviews for that matter, because it will reveal just how little traffic both are actually driving to external websites.”
Thomas Baekdal, a media analyst and founder at Baekdal Media, commented on the risk of AI shopping to merchants:
“So, now you don't get the mobile view or the desktop view. You get no additional sales, and you have to ship each item individually. This is just so mind-bogglingly idiotic that I'm 100% sure that nobody at Google has ever actually worked with real webshops because, if they did, they would never have made this feature. It's going to destroy the profitability of so many webshops. And no, scale doesn't fix it when you end up with a much higher per-item cost.”
Meanwhile, Google is taking some heat for its virtual try-on tool adding boobs to users!
Try It On was caught adding boobs to both women and men, including minors, trying on women's clothing. Google says that Try It On “understands the human body and nuances of clothing,” but the tool appears to be morphing bodies to match idealized model standards using photos from the merchant websites and using gender stereotypes, rather than realistically fitting the garments to users’ actual photos.
The Atlantic tested the tool with Vice President J.D. Vance, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, former President Abraham Lincoln, and other famous male figures — and Google gave them boobs! The tool also repeatedly enhanced the breasts or added breasts that were not visible to images of women.
Google said that the company has “strong protections, including blocking sensitive apparel categories and preventing the upload of images of clearly identifiable minors,” and that it will “continue to improve the experience.”