Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is pressing Google for more information about its plans to build a checkout feature into its Gemini AI chatbot. In a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Warren expressed concerns that the integration could allow Google and retailers to “exploit sensitive user data” or “manipulate consumers into spending more and paying higher prices.”
last month, Google announced it It will soon allow users to purchase products directly within Gemini through the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), a standard developed in partnership with Shopify, Target, Walmart, Wayfair, and Etsy. The UCP is supposed to make it easier for AI agents to communicate with retailers, but Warren wants to know how much user information — and what types — Google plans to provide to retailers through this line.
“Google already has unprecedented collections of AI-driven user search data and chat data, and this intimate data could be combined with both user data from other Google services and third-party retailer data to drive consumer behavior in an exploitative way,” Warren wrote, while also questioning whether Google will prioritize shopping results from retail partners over competitors.
Warren adds that the company has already admitted that it will use “sensitive data to help retailers upsell consumers to purchase a more premium product.” He cites the letter Response from Google to X She explained that retailers will be able to “show people additional premium product options that they might be interested in.”
In addition to a series of questions about user privacy, Warren is asking Google for information about how user data affects pricing, as well as whether it will tell users when Gemini suggests a product “based on sales objectives, advertising incentives, or sensitive user data.” Google has until February 17 to respond.