Google overhauls Shopping platform with AI for more personalization

Dive Brief: 

• Google has overhauled its Google Shopping platform with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance its online shopping experience, according to a company blog post. The updates are rolling out in the U.S. over the coming weeks.
• Among the new features is an AI-generated brief within a user’s search that will provide product recommendations and key information to consider. That experience also includes a virtual try-on feature powered by generative AI and augmented reality.
• New features also include a personalized feed featuring shoppable products and videos along with a personalized deals page. Together, the updates could help court advertisers ahead of the critical Q4 shopping period. 

Dive Insight: 

Consumers are expected to spend nearly $300 billion through e-commerce sales this holiday season, according to a report from Deloitte. With the new AI enhancements to its Shopping platform, Google could shore up stronger advertiser interest around the crucial period. The move also sees Google continuing to make AI a core part of its business.

Consumers shop across Google more than a billion times a day, using its features to virtually try on clothes, compare prices and use Google Lens to shop for products they might see out in the wild, according to Google’s blog post. The new Google Shopping product has been rebuilt with AI enhancements to pair the 45 billion product listings in Google’s Shopping Graph with its Gemini AI models.

In the company’s blog post, Sean Scott, vice president and general manager of Google Shopping, offered an example of shopping for a winter coat in the Pacific Northwest to explain how the new Google Shopping worked. Using the query “men’s winter jacket for Seattle” would provide an AI brief about the best qualities in a coat for the climate, as well as product recommendations and explanations about why they would be fit for the searcher’s needs. 

Other features include a more organized view of the types of products to consider, links to articles for more research and dynamic preference features like size and product availability. In recognition that some consumers may be shopping for products over a long stretch of time, Google Shopping will also let shoppers easily pick up where they left off. 

Google’s blog post also notes that the new tools are experimental and the results will be labeled as such “because this new, experimental feature may not always get it right.” Users can provide feedback through the three-dot menu on the brief to help the AI improve. Google’s generative AI tools, specifically its AI Overview feature, notably turned out questionable recommendations when the company rolled them out earlier this year. 

Google’s AI-based enhancements to its Shopping features come as the U.S. Department of Justice is finalizing its recommendations to break up the company, which has been deemed an illegal monopoly by a federal judge. Google’s ongoing AI plans are central to those recommendations, according to The Verge.