Google Cloud launches AI-powered solutions for online retailers

Google Cloud has announced the launch of Product Discovery Solutions for Retail, a suite of solutions built to help retailers enhance their ecommerce capabilities and deliver highly personalised consumer experience.

Product Discovery Solutions for Retail will allow retailers to implement seamless search and recommendation capabilities that enhance consumer engagement and improve conversions across retailers’ own digital properties.

With COVID-19 and the decade-long push to shift to online shopping, the retail industry now facing one of its most unpredictable periods to date. Retailers are now pressured to prioritise ecommerce improvements that enhance the entire consumer shopping journey, while also driving bottom-line sales for their businesses.

In developing Product Discovery Solutions for Retail, Google leveraged its own semantic understanding of online search and user intent, as well as  collaborated with some of the world’s leading retailers. This brings together AI algorithms with the highly scalable infrastructure of Google Cloud.

The cloud computing service’s Product Discovery Solutions for Retail include:

Recommendations AI, which is now generally available, enables retailers to deliver highly personalised product recommendations at scale and across all channels. The solution also uses Google Cloud’s latest machine-learning architectures, so retailers can dynamically adapt to real-time user behaviour and changes.

Another part of the new suite of solutions, Vision API Product Search allows retailers to adapt to how today’s consumers are finding product inspiration and discovery whether that happens from retailer-specific websites or on any social media platforms. Shoppers can search for products with an image and receive a ranked list of visually and semantically similar items. Vision API Product Search is also now generally available to all companies.

Finally, Google Cloud Search for Retail, currently in private preview, pulls from Google’s understanding of user intent and context to provide retailers with high-quality product search functionality that can be embedded into their websites and mobile apps.

“As the shift to online continues, smarter and more personalized shopping experiences will be even more critical for retailers to rise above their competition,” said Carrie Tharp, VP of retail and consumer at Google Cloud.

“Retailers are in dire need of agile operating models powered by cloud infrastructure and technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) to meet today’s industry demands. We’re proud to partner with retailers around the world, and bring forward our Product Discovery offerings to help them succeed,” Tharp said.

Source: Google Cloud