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

Kerry Wan/ZDNET

Follow ZDNET: Add america arsenic a preferred source on Google.

ZDNET's cardinal takeaways

• Google's Universal Cart lets shoppers acquisition products from aggregate retailers successful 1 place. 
• Gemini's agentic AI runs successful the inheritance to suggest purchases. 
• The extremity is to automate purchases, streamline checkout, and foretell user behavior.

At Google's I/O developer league connected Tuesday, the institution introduced a slew of updates to search, including a caller diagnostic called "Universal Cart", an AI-powered buying adjunct that consolidates your buying into 1 spot nether Google's Universal Commerce Protocol. One cart, aggregate retailers.  

The UCP is an unfastened modular for commerce and agentic AI, co-developed alongside large retailers specified arsenic Target, Shopify, Wayfair, and Etsy. It allows them to run connected Google Pay portion inactive giving customers entree to retailer-specific data, specified arsenic loyalty programs oregon recognition cards.  

Also: Everything we saw astatine Google I/O: Gemini 3.5, Android XR glasses, Spark, and more

Universal Cart gives Google's AI entree to your merchandise selections from each implicit its ecosystem: YouTube, Gmail, Gemini, oregon search, allowing it to supply insights connected what you're buying, marque suggestions, and unfastened the doorway for each sorts of different interactions.

In a preview telephone up of I/O, Vidhya Srinivasan, Google's VP of Ads and Commerce, said these features volition "make buying much fun." What she apt means is that it reduces the barriers betwixt "Add to cart" and "Checkout". Retailers privation this to beryllium arsenic frictionless arsenic imaginable -- instant, adjacent -- and arsenic personalized arsenic possible. 

Google

The agentic AI tin surely beryllium useful. In a unrecorded demo during I/O, Srinivasan showed a shopper adding a CPU and motherboard to their cart, lone to beryllium notified by the AI that the 2 devices aren't really compatible. Good call. In another, it prompted the idiosyncratic to instrumentality vantage of a discount by utilizing a antithetic recognition card.

All of this is intended to beryllium automatic. If you're buying connected Google and adhd thing to the cart, it works successful the background, searching for amended deals, letting you cognize if a merchantability terms is really worthy it, oregon highlighting immoderate circumstantial merchantability accusation -- each adjuvant actions that assistance the consumer. But it's besides tracking your behavior, keeping tabs connected what you're looking at, and predicting aboriginal purchases. 

Also: Google's caller AI Search container is present - on with agents and 5 much upgrades

Google's Universal Cart is conscionable the extremity of the iceberg. I saw Google demo a akin feature backmost successful January during a property demo of its Auto Browse diagnostic successful Chrome, wherever the idiosyncratic gives the browser support to instrumentality enactment connected their behalf. In the demo, the idiosyncratic showed Gemini a photograph of immoderate enactment decorations, instructing it to find the products connected the web. 

After analyzing the image, it located the streamers, balloons, and decorations and added them to the cart. In theory, with Google's UCP, you wouldn't person to checkout successful abstracted tabs connected Etsy, Amazon, and Walmart -- it would each beryllium successful 1 place. Easy. 

All of these features enactment unneurotic to marque integer buying much seamless, due to the fact that it needs to beryllium if retailers privation to summation conversions. Google continues to emphasize however Gemini and agentic AI excels astatine carrying retired "digital laundry" -- that is, handling regular tasks -- and these features grip those buying tasks nicely. 

Also: Generative AI was everyplace astatine Google I/O 2026, but who is it for? - Video

The features tin beryllium precise helpful, particularly if you cognize however to leverage the cause efficaciously oregon if they alert you to circumstantial inquiries. If you bargain the aforesaid benignant of toilet insubstantial each month, Gemini is determination to marque definite you don't forget, and volition adhd it to your cart -- and marque the acquisition -- itself. 

The eventual extremity is speaking to the AI successful earthy connection and giving it support to transportation retired actions connected your behalf, and automating regular purchases is the archetypal step. What could beryllium much amusive than AI agents spending your wealth portion you sleep?