Welcome to this week's AI edition of The Commerce Brief 🤖

✦ THIS WEEK’S AI INDUSTRY UPDATES

01. Google has partnered with Affirm and Klarna to make buy now, pay later offerings available through its AI Mode, where consumers can have AI agents make purchases on their behalf. The integration brings BNPL into the agentic commerce space, allowing shoppers to finance purchases seamlessly within AI-driven shopping experiences. (source)

02. Amazon has launched Alexa for Shopping, a personalised AI shopping assistant that combines Rufus's product expertise with Alexa+'s personalised knowledge and context. Available on the Amazon Shopping app, website and Echo Show devices, the tool allows US customers to browse and shop the full Amazon store using voice, touch, or both. (source)

03. OpenAI is making it easier for e-commerce companies to run ads on ChatGPT with a new "product feed" campaign format. Retailers connect their product catalogue, set filters for eligible products and let the platform generate ads automatically from product names, images and attributes. Ads appear below ChatGPT responses, clearly labelled as sponsored. (source)

04. Allegro, Poland's largest e-commerce platform, has entered a partnership with OpenAI to develop AI-powered applications tailored to e-commerce. The collaboration will support Allegro's ambitions to simplify shopping, improve seller tools, enhance marketing effectiveness and accelerate product development. Allegro has also recently introduced an AI assistant for sellers. (source)

05. Prosus, the investment firm behind iFood, Delivery Hero and Just Eat Takeaway, has developed its own Large Commerce Model (LCM), trained on billions of transactions, to generate personalised recommendations. In Brazil, the model has driven a 75% increase in conversions via notifications at iFood and significantly reduced customer acquisition costs. The group now runs 5,000 daily AI agents across its portfolio. (source)

06. Hims & Hers is betting on AI to steer its next phase of growth, building a technology platform designed to handle a variety of patient conditions and adapt to shifts in drug availability amid the GLP-1 boom. The strategy centres on using AI to power a more flexible, responsive health and wellness platform. (source)

07. Swap has launched Swap Storefront, an AI-powered sales channel that guides shoppers from product discovery to live virtual try-on to checkout in a single, fully branded experience. Launch partners include SIMKHAI, Retrofête, Odd Muse, Studio Nicholson and Manors Golf. (source)

08. Etsy has debuted a live beta app in ChatGPT, allowing users to search and compare Etsy items directly in conversation and click through to purchase. The marketplace is also piloting a beta conversational search experience on its own platform to help shoppers find gifts. (source)

09. Alibaba is preparing to integrate its AI platform Qwen with online marketplace Taobao, enabling consumers to browse, compare and purchase items via conversational AI rather than keyword searches. The Qwen app will have access to the full Taobao and Tmall catalogue of over 4bn products. (source)

That's a wrap for this week! If you found this useful, hit reply and let me know, or share it with someone in the industry who'd enjoy the read.

Thanks - Sue