Google will let users call stores, browse products, and check out using AI (www.theverge.com)

Google announced a suite of AI shopping features rolling out in the US that let users search, compare, call stores, and even complete purchases using AI. In Search’s AI Mode (and the Gemini app) shoppers can hold natural-language conversations to refine queries—e.g., “women’s sweaters…” then “more options in gray”—with results drawn from Google’s ~50 billion product listings and presented as image cards or side‑by‑side comparison charts. Results include historic pricing, price-tracking, and sponsored listings. New “agentic” capabilities let users ask “Let Google Call” to phone local stores (the agent discloses it’s an AI; merchants can opt out) to check stock or promotions, and an agentic checkout can watch for a user‑named price and use Google Pay to buy items automatically from partners like Wayfair, Chewy, Quince and some Shopify sellers. For AI/ML practitioners and the e‑commerce ecosystem, this is significant because it pushes large‑scale retrieval, multimodal ranking, and agentic decision-making into live commerce workflows. Key technical implications include real‑time integration of massive product catalogs, multimodal signals (images, social content, reviews) in generated recommendations, and trust/verification challenges around automated calls and automated payment authorization. The move also centralizes discovery and transaction funnels—raising questions about ad dynamics, creator and retailer traffic displacement, opt‑out/consent handling, and how models surface or monetize third‑party content.