Disclosed on October 12, Google is developing a brand-new on-screen contextual shopping suggestion feature called “Shop this” for its AI assistant Gemini.
A code teardown shows that the feature is built into the Gemini floating overlay (Floaty UI) in version 17.66.11.sa.arm64 of the Google app for Android. When users browse products in any third-party application, they can invoke Gemini directly without manually switching apps or searching. The feature can automatically recognize the product currently on screen and find purchase channels, while providing key comparisons of summaries of the product's core uses, specifications, and size parameters, and proactively recommending alternative products of a similar kind in different styles.
This strategic move continues Google's overall plan to upgrade retail experiences with large models, deeply integrating Gemini's previously scattered product recognition and shopping comparison capabilities into on-screen contextual awareness above the application layer, greatly simplifying users' cross-app shopping decision path. The feature is still in an early development and testing stage, and its final form and range of app compatibility remain to be further confirmed.
As AI assistants evolve from simple text Q&A toward multimodal and instant perception interaction, Gemini's penetration into cross-app shopping scenarios is expected to redefine the paradigm of mobile search and e-commerce traffic guidance.