Google Is Weaving Generative AI Into Online Shopping Features (bloomberg.com) 10
Google is bringing generative AI technology to shopping, aiming to get a jump on e-commerce sites like Amazon. From a report: The Alphabet-owned company announced features Wednesday aimed at helping people understand how apparel will fit on them, no matter their body size, and added capabilities for finding products using its search and image-recognition technology. Additionally, Google introduced new ways to research travel destinations and map routes using generative AI -- technology that can craft text, images or even video from simple prompts.
"We want to make Google the place for consumers to come shop, as well as the place for merchants to connect with consumers," Maria Renz, Google's vice president of commerce, said in an interview ahead of the announcement. "We've always been committed to an open ecosystem and a healthy web, and this is one way where we're bringing this technology to bear across merchants." Google is the world's dominant search engine, but 46% of respondents in a survey of US shoppers conducted last year said they still started their product searches and research on Amazon, according to the research firm CivicScience. TikTok, too, is making inroads, CivicScience's research found -- 18% of Gen Z online shoppers turn to the platform first. Google is taking note, with some of its new, AI-powered shopping exploration features aimed at capturing younger audiences.
A new virtual "try-on" feature, launching on Wednesday, will let people see how clothes fit across a range of body types, from XXS to 4XL sizes. Apparel will be overlaid on top of images of diverse models that the company photographed while developing the capability. Google said it was able to launch such a service because of a new image-based AI model that it developed internally, and the company is releasing a new research paper detailing its work alongside the announcement.
"We want to make Google the place for consumers to come shop, as well as the place for merchants to connect with consumers," Maria Renz, Google's vice president of commerce, said in an interview ahead of the announcement. "We've always been committed to an open ecosystem and a healthy web, and this is one way where we're bringing this technology to bear across merchants." Google is the world's dominant search engine, but 46% of respondents in a survey of US shoppers conducted last year said they still started their product searches and research on Amazon, according to the research firm CivicScience. TikTok, too, is making inroads, CivicScience's research found -- 18% of Gen Z online shoppers turn to the platform first. Google is taking note, with some of its new, AI-powered shopping exploration features aimed at capturing younger audiences.
A new virtual "try-on" feature, launching on Wednesday, will let people see how clothes fit across a range of body types, from XXS to 4XL sizes. Apparel will be overlaid on top of images of diverse models that the company photographed while developing the capability. Google said it was able to launch such a service because of a new image-based AI model that it developed internally, and the company is releasing a new research paper detailing its work alongside the announcement.
Searching products on Google: desperate measure (Score:2)
It's only after you have gone through Amazon, eBay, a supply house for the industry in question...
The reason why is that the results are the next thing to useless. I don't see in a world full of database-backed shopping sites and robots.txt, how that would change.
more annoying bullshit from google, thanks! (Score:2)
They're going to make it even harder to avoid being pestered with bullshit ads, aren't they?
sometimes you just want information, I think google has kind of forgotten there's more to the internet and search than how/where to buy something.
Not to mention being suspicious of cramming shitty AI into everything. Does it actually work better at sussing out meaning behind search terms than the current approach search engines use? Because as it is now, search is largely useless for anything other than a vehicle
Re: (Score:2)
They're going to make it even harder to avoid being pestered with bullshit ads, aren't they? sometimes you just want information, I think google has kind of forgotten there's more to the internet and search than how/where to buy something.
That's completely by design. When big business first noticed that Internet thing the kids were talking about, they espoused it would one day be like a television with a big, giant buy button on it. They're slowly widdling away the the informative information, and now they'll be able to speed that process along with shitty, half-baked "AI" to help guide users away from information they may seek, and toward purchases they probably hadn't even thought they wanted.
Blahberg Paywall (Score:2)
TFA is behind a paywall. Google blog post about the virtual try on here [blog.google].
Clothes online (Score:2)
It's not for you to get actual website search results and click on links. Google pulls out individual items and puts them in a scrolling gallery up top with price info pulled out next to the picture. It seems they already have access to the backend for a lot of retailers.
This is for people who talk to their smartphone and desire it to talk back, bringing a list of items directly to their face. Creating a bookmark for http://www.amazon.com/ [amazon.com] is too much trouble for them. Launching a web browser is too much tr
Re: (Score:2)
All that stuff about inches and feet and numbers makes the brain hurt.
Oh, if only they included inches and feet and numbers. Instead you get "This shirt comes in sizes short, tall, venti, grande, and demi." "Oh no, 36 isn't the inches; that's 36 of our proprietary increments up from a size 0." "Choose pants size from regular, unleaded, or double secret probation."
Mrs. Esophagus tells me she has it even worse. Not only do "small", "medium", and "large" et al mean different body measurements across different brands, but they can even mean different body measurements across di
Based on your purchase patterns (Score:2)
Great. (Score:1)
Great! I'm gonna go order a pair of translucent tripodal boot-cut cast iron boxer shorts with radial symmetry, trilateral 4D vector processing, and a built-in fully automated anti-doxing system, in size 40/34 relaxed fit.
Perhaps we could stop calling this "AI" (Score:2)
ChatGPT is just a more modern version of the Eliza program. It knows absolutely nothing but, it can produce responses that other people have said before. It does that based on statistical analysis. That alone should tell you that most of the information it puts out is going to be wrong, and some of the time it will insist that the Earth is flat.
So, you know, it's just copying things that ordinary idiots have said before.
The current AI hype is hysterical in several meanings of the word, and seems to be marke