Google’s Gemini and agentic AI are transforming retail, turning discovery, decision-making, and checkout into a seamless, personalized, and fully integrated experience.

Apple will lean on Google to help finish its bungled attempts to smarten up its virtual assistant Siri and bring other artificial intelligence features to the iPhone as the trendsetting company plays catch up in technology’s latest craze.

Apple is sitting out the costly race to build AI models and infrastructure, as the iPhone maker becomes a potential kingmaker among tech rivals seeking to dominate the new industry. This week, the Silicon Valley group announced its most consequential move in AI so far through a deal to use Google’s Gemini models to power features for the iPhone and improve its Siri voice assistant.

Google executive Sameer Samat sees the past year as one of curiosity about AI. This year, he's focused on its utility.

Google’s Gemini AI is getting what could prove to be a very big upgrade: To help answers from Gemini be more personalized, the company is going to let you connect the chatbot to Gmail, Google Photos, Search, and your YouTube history to provide what Google is calling “Personal Intelligence.”

The search giant is making its first foray into purpose-built AI agents for retail. Meanwhile, major chains are already preparing for the wave of AI agent-based shopping.

This follows an investigation by the Guardian that found Google AI Overviews offering misleading information in response to some health-related queries.

Ads in AI Overviews are already performing at "about the same rate" as traditional search ads, according to Google's VP of global ads, Dan Taylor.

NEW YORK (AP) — Google said Sunday that it is expanding the shopping features in its AI chatbot by teaming up with Walmart, Shopify, Wayfair and other big retailers to turn the Gemini app into a virtual merchant as well as an assistant.