Gap partners with Google Gemini to offer AI platform checkout

Gap is partnering with Google’s Gemini to allow shoppers to check out directly within the AI platform, making it the first major fashion company to work directly with the tech company to fuel agentic commerce, CNBC has learned exclusively. 

The partnership comes as more and more shoppers move away from traditional search and toward artificial intelligence platforms for product discovery, forcing retailers to rethink their approach to marketing to ensure they’re staying competitive and not missing out on customer demand. 

“It’s not just keyword search anymore, right? It’s conversations, and so we need to be relevant to that,” Gap’s chief technology officer, Sven Gerjets, told CNBC in an interview. “Is it, you know, ‘I’m trying to figure out what to do for a wedding, what are the things I should be looking at?’ Or, ‘I’ve got a job interview, are there some styles I should wear?’ All of those things we need to become relevant to.” 

When shoppers are hunting for a new pair of jeans or the perfect oversized hoodie on Gemini, and the platform thinks some of Gap’s products could be a fit, customers will be able to buy products from Gap’s house of brands directly within the platform without having to be redirected to the brand’s website.

The information about the product that is surfaced to shoppers won’t be crawled from Gap’s website but will be details the retailer provided to Gemini in advance so it can control for accuracy, continue to collect customer data and have better control over the customer experience. 

If the shopper decides to buy the product, they’ll check out via Google Pay, and Gap will handle the shipping and any other logistics.

Gerjets said Gap is still testing the service’s capabilities but expects to deploy it to customers “imminently.”

In addition, a new AI-powered sizing tool dubbed Bold Metrics and built by Gap will help customers find the right size when shopping online and will also launch soon to shoppers.

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

As long as a retailer’s website has data that an AI platform can read, the company’s products will likely surface in chat results if the platform considers them a fit for a shopper’s inquiry, but there’s a lot of work that retailers need to do to ensure they’re showing up properly.

If a shopper is looking for a sundress on an AI platform, for example, and a company offers a relevant product, but the data isn’t readable by an LLM, the brand could miss out on the sale. 

Most major companies are using and implementing AI in a variety of ways, but so far, none of Gap’s primary competitors have announced similar…