Gap is partnering with Google Gemini to offer payment service via the artificial intelligence platform

gap It is partnered with Google Gemini will allow shoppers to check out directly on the artificial intelligence platform, making it the first major fashion company to work directly with the tech company to fuel agent commerce, CNBC has learned exclusively.

This partnership comes as more and more shoppers are moving away from traditional search and towards artificial intelligence platforms for product discovery, forcing retailers to rethink their approach to marketing to ensure they remain competitive and do not miss out on customer demand.

“It’s not just keyword searches anymore, right? They’re conversations, so we need to be relevant to that,” Sven Gergets, Gap’s chief technology officer, said in an interview with CNBC. “Is it, you know, ‘I’m trying to figure out what to do for a wedding, what are the things I should look for?’ or ‘I have a job interview, are there some styles I should wear?’ All those things that we need to become relevant to.”

When shoppers search for a new pair of jeans or the perfect oversized sweater on Gemini, and the platform thinks certain Gap products might be a fit, customers will be able to purchase products from Gap’s house of brands directly through the platform without having to be redirected to the brand’s website.

The product-related information shown to shoppers will not be crawled from Gap’s website, but will be details the retailer provides to Gemini in advance so it can control accuracy, continue to collect customer data, and better control the customer experience.

If the shopper decides to purchase the product, they will pay via Google Pay, and Gap will handle the shipping and any other logistics.

Gap is still testing the service’s capabilities but expects to roll it out to customers “soon,” Gerjets said.

Additionally, a new AI-powered sizing tool called Bold Metrics designed by Gap will help customers find the right size when shopping online and will also be launched to shoppers soon.

Gap’s partnership with Gemini and its gains in customer-facing AI tools give it a competitive advantage at a time when winning in specialty retail is harder than ever. The overall fashion market has become increasingly fragmented and more competitive.

As long as a retailer’s website contains data that the AI ​​platform can read, a company’s products will likely appear in chat results if the platform deems them relevant to a shopper’s inquiry, but there’s a lot of work to be done by retailers to ensure they appear correctly.

If a shopper searches for a sundress on an AI platform, for example, and the company offers a related product, but the data is not readable by the LLM, the brand may miss the sale.

Most major companies use and implement AI in a variety of ways, but so far, none of Gap’s primary competitors have announced similar partnerships with Gemini.

GAP’s approach to proxy trading is the first iteration that is expected to evolve over time, Gergets said.

Currently, customers will not be able to link loyalty accounts or spend points on a transaction, he said. This could create some friction for regular customers, but Gergets said the option could be added in the future.

“We’re going to continue to evolve the experience and deliver things that customers want, so that’s definitely the roadmap and the future,” Gergets said. “I think it’s a very first foray into a journey we’re all on to define what agent commerce is for clients.”

Gap’s partnership with Gemini comes after OpenAI struck similar deals with companies like Walmart and Etsy Just to back away from plans to offer payment directly within the app.

While the number of people using AI platforms for product discovery is growing, it still represents a small portion of total shoppers, and the number of customers who would feel comfortable checking directly with LLMs remains unclear.

Some shoppers may be concerned about putting their credit card information into the platform, while others may prefer to shop directly through the retailer’s app where the store’s credit card and loyalty points are stored.

Given how long shoppers interact with Google and the fact that it already has customer payment information stored within its system, some shoppers may feel more comfortable using Gemini for checkout versus newer AI platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

In some ways, the Gemini platform is also more advanced. Google recently released new updates so that real-time product data is available to users, preventing challenges like out-of-stocks and pricing errors. Shoppers will also be able to add multiple items to their carts and link loyalty memberships in some cases, two features that have yet to be fully resolved by OpenAI.

OpenAI and Gemini also have two different protocols for proxy trading, Gerjets said. The “Global Commerce Protocol,” which Gap uses on Gemini, is designed for merchants to better control the end-to-end shopping experience, while OpenAI’s “Proxy Commerce Protocol” is designed more for discovery, Gergets said.

“This space is moving so fast… We are all evolving and learning together, and who knows what space will look like in five years, who will be crowned victor, or how fragmented space will be?” Gergets said. “For us, it is important that we work with all of them, because we really want to meet our customers where they want to be.”