Improved Shopping Experience
Google Cloud, which announced the launch of these features on January 13, highlights that this set of solutions provides a significant improvement in the shopping experience using features such as:
- Image attributes that will help find products
- Understanding user behavior through previous browsing experiences.
A highly likely potential scenario is that retailers may offer consumers more personalized product lists that closely identify with their real expectations.
What we usually see nowadays are lists of products classified in ways that are much more focused on business needs, with highlights such as “bestsellers” or collections of products according to seasonality, season changes, etc., which do not always represent what the user wants to buy.
Product recommendations will also have a more dynamic presentation, which can be much more efficient and, consequently, increase the chances of sales.
Some retailers are also experimenting with AI-generated shopping assistants—little chat widgets that do more than just answer questions. They offer actual suggestions in real time, attempting to mimic the trusted, friendly salesperson you rarely find in physical stores anymore. I’m not saying these bots are perfect (they get stumped every now and then), but when they work, it’s hard not to be at least a little impressed.
On a related note, there’s a bit of a double-edged sword situation happening as AI gets cozier with retail. The more sites know about your browsing and buying habits, the creepier things can feel if you’re not braced for it. But if you can get past that initial “how did they know I wanted those sneakers?” moment, the tailored experience tends to keep folks coming back—and shopping more often, at least if you believe the numbers coming out of 2025 so far.
See Macy’s case, which already uses the solution, making use of AI for retailers and offering more individualized experiences for its customers in the online store.
In addition, I also believe we can expect better results for “long tail” searches because AI can better understand them. Until then when we used to look for a specific product, these sites generated poor returns.
AI-based Inventory Control
Another huge feature that Google Cloud includes in their AI offerings, is “shelf check”.
Last Friday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai posted on his Twitter account that one of these new AI features would also “use machine learning models to identify billions of products based on visual and text features, helping retailers check their in-store shelf stock”.
On the same day, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Google Cloud said that this feature should be available in the coming months.
Reinforcing Pichai’s post, they also claim that the algorithm will be able to detect and verify the availability of packaged products still on the shelves through the images captured by the cameras installed in the physical storage locations.
The solution would solve a current problem for retailers who currently control availability updates manually with little security, and who do not always carry them out in real time.
