Gap Pilots AI Shopping Inside Google Gemini With Personalized Fit Recommendations

Gap Inc. made itself the first major fashion company to enable direct checkout inside Google Gemini, announcing the move at Shoptalk Spring on March 24 and completing a shopping journey that lets someone ask a question and buy an answer without opening a single new tab.

All four Gap Inc. brands, Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, and Athleta, are now accessible through Google's Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), a structure built to give retailers more control over the in-AI shopping experience than competing approaches. Gap CTO Sven Gerjets drew a direct contrast with OpenAI's protocol at Shoptalk, noting that UCP was designed for merchant control while OpenAI's Agentic Commerce Protocol skews more toward discovery. "For us, it's important that we work with all of them," Gerjets told CNBC, "because we really want to meet our customers where they want to be."

For gift shoppers, the practical shift is real. Rather than opening separate tabs for each brand, cross-referencing size charts, and losing momentum at checkout, a Gemini conversation can surface a Banana Republic cashmere sweater, an Old Navy puffer vest, or an Athleta training set and close the purchase through Google Pay, all within the same chat window. Gap retains merchant-of-record status throughout, meaning returns, order disputes, and customer service stay with the brand rather than the platform.

The fit problem gets its own dedicated fix. Gap signed on as an early partner for Bold Metrics' Agentic Sizing Protocol (ASP), which replaces static size guides with personalized fit recommendations delivered inside the AI conversation itself. "We are not pursuing AI for novelty," Gerjets said. "These partnerships are about solving real customer problems, helping shoppers feel confident about fit and making it easier to complete a purchase."

That confidence matters most when buying for someone else. Shoppers who arrive at a Gemini conversation with the recipient's measurements or usual size, a style preference, and a firm delivery deadline will get meaningfully sharper recommendations than those who type "gift for mom." The ASP is engineered for exactly that input, translating it into a specific recommendation across Gap Inc.'s catalog rather than a generic prompt to size up or down.

Gerjets positioned the entire strategy around a shift already underway: shoppers increasingly begin their searches not with a keyword in a search bar but with a question in an AI assistant. "This space is moving so quickly," he said. "We're all evolving and learning together, and who knows what the space will look like in five years." What Gap is betting is that whoever controls the conversational layer controls the sale, and for now, it intends to be present in every chat where that sale could happen.