AI has been a part of the Google Shopping experience for a while now. In October last year, Google started showing an AI-generated brief with suggestions about the products users are looking for, alongside tailored product listings.
A month prior to that, the Shopping tab added an AI-powered virtual try-on experience featuring various body shapes to show the right size fitting. Now, Google is giving it another AI-fueled update that involves literally turning your fashion ideas into a digital garment, one that will be used to find similar pieces of real clothing items.
How AI will reinvent shopping
Let’s say you are on the hunt for ”pink socks with blue flowers and red polka dots.” Entering that query may not necessarily find you real products matching that description, as that would depend on whether a seller of such items has labelled their products and images accordingly to match your description.
With AI-generated picture templates, Google will move away from text or metadata matching, and rely on vision-based matching to discover such items.
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When you look up an item with a very specific set of fashion requirements and scroll past the items list in the Shopping tab, you will see a new tool called “Can’t find it? Create it.” Users can also access the same facility under the“Create & Shop”name on the left side-panel.
Tapping on it will present a text box, where you enter the exact description of your dream apparel. This works just like text-to-image AI tools such as OpenAI’s Dall-E in ChatGPT or Google’s Imagen AI engine.
The underlying AI will create a photorealistic image of your clothing idea, with a few variations in tow. Users can tap on the one they like the most, and scroll down to find similar shoppable items listed across the web.
This idea was originally launched as an experiment back in October last year, but has remained exclusive to users who opted-in for the Search Generative Experience (SGE) within Search Labs. It is now available widely to all users in the US market on the mobile platform.
Expanded choice for virtual try-ons
Google is also expanding the scope of its virtual try-on (VTO) tool. So far, it has only allowed users to experiment with top-wear. Starting today, users will see the option to virtually try bottomwear, such as pants and skirts, as well.
Aside from apparel, Google is also focusing on beauty and makeup products. When users are shopping for such items, they can tap on the “See the looks on you” tool, which launches a front camera preview of their face.
Here, users can simply tap on any product listing they are seeing, and it will be applied to their face using an augmented reality makeover. Google says it has improved the AR try-on experience by upgrading the underlying framework to its Gemini AI models.