In an exciting development for online shopping, Google has announced an expansion of its AI chatbot’s shopping capabilities by collaborating with major retailers such as Walmart, Shopify, and Wayfair. This strategic move aims to transform the Gemini app into a virtual marketplace, offering customers a seamless shopping experience alongside its existing assistant functions.

One of the standout features of this expansion is the introduction of an instant checkout option. This allows users to purchase products from selected businesses directly within the Gemini chat interface. With support from various payment providers, this streamlined process ensures customers can complete transactions without ever leaving the chat they initially used to discover products.

The announcement was made at the commencement of the National Retail Federation’s annual convention in New York, an event expected to focus heavily on the role of artificial intelligence in reshaping e-commerce and influencing consumer habits over the next three days.

In a joint statement, John Furner, the incoming president and CEO of Walmart, emphasized the significance of this shift. “The transition from traditional web or app search to agent-led commerce marks the next significant evolution in retail,” he remarked, alongside Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.

The functionality of Google’s enhanced AI shopping feature is straightforward yet innovative. For instance, if a user inquires about suitable gear for a winter ski trip, Gemini will efficiently pull up relevant products from the inventories of participating retailers, offering a user-friendly and integrated shopping solution.

In the case of Walmart, customers who link their Walmart and Gemini accounts will receive recommendations based on their past purchases, and any products they decide to buy via the chatbot could get combined with their existing Walmart or Sam’s Club online shopping carts, according to the statement.

OpenAI and Walmart announced a similar deal in October, saying the partnership would allow ChatGPT members to use an instant checkout feature to shop for nearly everything available on Walmart’s website except for fresh food.

Google, OpenAI and Amazon all are racing to create tools that would allow for seamless AI-powered shopping by taking chatbot users from browsing to buying within the same program instead of having to go to a retailer’s website to complete a purchase. The race between OpenAI and Google has heated up in recent months.

Before the recent holiday shopping season, OpenAI launched an instant checkout feature within ChatGPT that allows users to buy products from select retailers and Etsy sellers without leaving the app.

San Francisco software company Salesforce estimated that AI influenced $272 billion, or 20%, of all global retail sales, in one way or another during the holiday shopping season.

Google said the AI-assisted shopping features in Gemini only would be available to U.S. users initially but that it planned to expand internationally in the coming months.