How Retailers Like Gap Are Betting Big On AI Partnerships

Right now we are in the middle of an AI revolution, and that revolution is going to change the way that we're shopping. And retailers are scrambling to figure out how they can make sure they're showing up on AI platforms when people are looking for new items. We're all kind of evolving and learning together, and who knows what the space will look like in five years? Who will kind of be crowned the victor? Gap is doing what they call the Universal Commerce Protocol. What this allows them to do is show up on LLM platforms, particularly Google's Gemini. When people are shopping and asking Gemini for help, looking for clothes. So let's say I'm taking a vacation and I'm in Gemini and I'm like, I need the perfect dress to wear out to a night in Key West. And because gap has formulated their data in a way, they're going to show up if it's a good fit for their items, along with other peer companies. I get a range of dress options for what I'm looking for. And let's say I like a dress from Old Navy. I click into that product listing, and all of the things that I'm seeing is something that gap is powering. So it's making sure it's kind of controlling that customer experience. And then I'm able to check out directly within Gemini. Gap is handling the shipping. The idea is agentic commerce. Being able to buy directly on Gemini, for example, will make the shopping experience more simple and they also need to make sure that their websites are crawlable by AI bots so that when I am searching for that perfect dress to wear in April in Key West, if the data is done right on the retailer's website, then that dress is going to show up in the LLM. Do you lose anything with this? It's very much designed so that we continue to own the relationship and the experience and you know, the customer data. The second thing that gap is doing is they are using AI powered sizing tools. So one of the biggest issues for online retail is returns. It's frustrating for you. You have to make a trip to UPS and print out a label and do all of that, but also it's very costly for the company. With this AI powered sizing tool, customers are going to be able to put in some basic information about their size and their weight and how they like to wear clothes. They don't actually have to upload any photos or anything like that. There's a real stacked win there for both the customer and the company. By solving this area. And that's why it's so important that we're rolling this out very early on. This idea of data privacy and safety is one of the things that might actually slow down implementation of AI shopping and agentic commerce, because some consumers absolutely are concerned about putting their, for example, sizing information within an AI engine. On Gap's website, being able to check out directly on an AI platform. How are they going to use my credit card information? What if the AI bot goes rogue and starts going on a shopping spree, and there is going to be kind of this ramp up period where people, you know, need to be kind of sold on the safety of this. That's one of the edges that gap has by working with Google. This is a company that we have known for decades, right? As it becomes more mature, we're going to learn a lot more about this. We might even find that customers hate shopping on LLMs. And all of this work really doesn't end up having any staying power. But it's where commerce is headed at the moment, and it's how retailers are kind of meeting this AI revolution.