Google's new AI-infused Shopping tab offers product briefs and personalized deals
Google recently announced it has completely rebuilt its Shopping platform, leveraging AI to create a more personalized and efficient online shopping experience. To power the new Shopping tab experiences, Google has combined the 45 billion product listings in its Shopping Graph with Gemini AI models. In addition to AI-generated briefs to make shopping decisions easier and faster, Google announced it will debut a personalized feed with shoppable products and videos based on user preferences and enhanced deal-finding tools, including a dedicated deals page.
At the core of the Google Shopping renovation are AI-generated briefs that suggest the most important considerations for a search query, alongside relevant product recommendations. The idea here is that the Gemini models, enhanced with the Shopping Graph knowledge, can understand and respond to nuances and details that could go unnoticed in a standard search. As an example, the blog post describes the case of the query “Men’s winter jacket for Seattle”: since the AI-generated brief catches on the implication that the user is looking for a coat suitable for the Pacific Northwest winter weather, the second most important consideration besides keeping the user warm will be keeping them dry.
Then, based on the identified considerations, the briefs include a selection of products sourced from the web, along with remarks clarifying why they are good fits for the search query. The recommended products are further organized under categories, making the research and selection process easier. Links to relevant web articles enable deeper research, while dynamic filters let users narrow the results according to availability or distance. Where applicable, the AI-generated briefs integrate Google's virtual try-on features. It is important to note that the briefs will be labeled "experimental," since they may still be error-prone. Google encourages user feedback to improve accuracy.
Google's new and improved Shopping tab will roll out in the U.S. over the coming weeks and joins other shopping-related launches, such as the recent Google Lens update—which enables the 'shopping with Lens' feature to identify products and display relevant information to users, including where to shop for that item or how to find similar options—, and Google's virtual try-on tool, which was recently updated to include dresses among the garments compatible with the feature.