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. The announcement, made this week at the Shoptalk Spring conference, signals a widening gap in strategy between Google and OpenAI as both tech giants race to monetise AI shopping.
Google has introduced new capabilities for its Universal Commerce Protocol that not only enable direct checkout but also loyalty integration, multi-item carts and real-time catalog updates. Gap will feed product details directly to the platform, a setup that lets the retailer control what shoppers see and ensures the listings stay accurate. Customers will be able to complete purchases without leaving the app, with Google Pay handling the checkout, while Gap takes care of shipping and other logistics.
OpenAI has begun scaling back its plans to introduce checkout directly inside ChatGPT and instead chosen to focus on having checkout take place inside of specific apps that plug into ChatGPT. OpenAI recently confirmed it's ending Instant Checkout, a tool that let users check out directly in ChatGPT, in favour of working with retailers to create dedicated apps in its chatbot. Product selection in Instant Checkout remained limited six months after the feature debuted, and it didn't always show up-to-date item information.
The contrast reflects fundamentally different philosophies about where commerce happens in the AI era. Gemini's approach to agentic shopping allows retailers to have better control over the shopping experience than OpenAI's ChatGPT, according to Gap's Chief Technology Officer. Google's platform leverages its existing relationships with merchants and payment infrastructure, whilst OpenAI discovered that building commerce infrastructure from scratch carried unexpected complexity.
OpenAI's retreat was not straightforward. Analysts told CNBC that OpenAI underestimated how difficult the enablement of transactions would be. It struggled to onboard merchants, show accurate data about products, and introduce multi-item carts or connect loyalty memberships. Onboarding merchants turned out to be an arduous process, and Instant Checkout was prone to errors, with roughly 30 Shopify merchants available via Instant Checkout as of last month.
The stakes are real for retailers trying to understand where customers are heading. While the number of people using AI platforms for product discovery is growing, it's still a small portion of overall shoppers, and the number of customers who will feel comfortable checking out directly within LLMs remains unclear. Nearly half of consumers (48%) plan to or have used AI to help with holiday shopping, but this reflects research and discovery usage rather than complete transactions.
Both companies are nonetheless pursuing expansion. OpenAI introduced shopping research, a new experience in ChatGPT that does the research for you to help you find the right products. Shopping research is starting to roll out to mobile and web for logged-in ChatGPT users on Free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans. Google's strategy remains more comprehensive, building the full transaction layer into its dominant search and assistant platforms.
For Gap, the Gemini partnership addresses a pressing concern. The announcement follows a broader shift in consumer behaviour as shoppers are relying more heavily on AI tools to find products, which has pressured retailers to reconsider how they reach customers outside of conventional search. A new AI-powered sizing tool dubbed Bold Metrics that Gap plans to integrate will help customers find the right size when shopping online and will also launch soon to shoppers.
The battle between these platforms may ultimately hinge on consumer behaviour. Industry experts say AI shopping as a whole is still early days. Everyone thinks everyone else has this figured out or is farther ahead, but the fact is that no one has this figured out. Google's early successes suggest that integrating checkout into platforms with existing user trust and payment infrastructure offers a clearer path forward than building commerce systems independently. OpenAI's pivot toward discovery, whilst less ambitious, may prove more sustainable if it allows the company to focus resources on what it does well: matching products to user intent.