Google says AI agents spending your money is a 'more fun' way to shop

"Google introduced a new feature called "Universal Cart", an AI-powered shopping assistant that consolidates your shopping into one place under Google's Universal Commerce Protocol. One cart, multiple retailers. The UCP is an open standard for commerce and agentic AI, co-developed alongside major retailers such as Target, Shopify, Wayfair, and Etsy. It allows them to operate on Google Pay while still giving customers access to retailer-specific data, such as loyalty programs or credit cards."

"Universal Cart gives Google's AI access to your product selections from all over its ecosystem: YouTube, Gmail, Gemini, or search, allowing it to provide insights on what you're buying, make suggestions, and open the door for all sorts of other interactions. The goal is to reduce the barriers between "Add to cart" and "Checkout" while making the experience instant and personalized for shoppers."

"In a live demo during I/O, Srinivasan showed a shopper adding a CPU and motherboard to their cart, only to be notified by the AI that the two devices aren't actually compatible. Good call. In another, it prompted the user to take advantage of a discount by using a different credit card. All of this is intended to be automatic."

Universal Cart enables shoppers to buy products from multiple retailers in one place using Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol. The protocol is an open standard co-developed with major retailers and supports Google Pay while preserving retailer-specific information such as loyalty programs and payment details. Agentic AI runs in the background to access product selections across Google services including YouTube, Gmail, Gemini, and search. It provides insights into what is being purchased, makes suggestions, and enables interactions that reduce the steps between adding items and completing checkout. Live demonstrations showed compatibility validation for items and prompts to use discounts through different credit cards, aiming for automated, personalized, low-friction shopping.

Read at ZDNET