Frasers Group said the partnership is the first of its kind in Europe and will touch three of its brands—Sports Direct, Flannels and Frasers. Those brands will use Commercetools’ agentic commerce suite to help shoppers discover Frasers’ products through publicly available large language models (LLMs).

David Clark, chief customer officer at Frasers Group, said the partnership will help the brands involved to meet consumers where they are today, while also anticipating where they’re headed next.

“The digital customer ecosystem is evolving faster than ever before, and so are customers’ expectations,” Clark said in a statement. “With this partnership, Frasers Group is now at the forefront of this evolution to deliver enhanced customer experiences across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity—including native checkout in ChatGPT—across Sports Direct, Flannels and Frasers. This marks a shift in our digital capabilities, delivering an even more intuitive and personalised shopping experience for our consumers.”

The announcement comes on the heels of retail giant Walmart announcing that it had partnered with OpenAI to make items available for purchase directly in ChatGPT. The companies did not disclose when Walmart items would be available via Instant Checkout, but items on Etsy are actively able to be purchased on the ChatGPT platform. OpenAI announced that “thousands” of Shopify merchants will also be available in the near future, with Vuori and Skims among them.

Andrew Burton, CEO of Commercetools, said Frasers Group’s integration comes at a critical turning point for the fashion, apparel and retail industries.

“The future of commerce is agentic, and it’s arriving faster than most retailers realize,” Burton said in a statement. “Frasers Group understands that when customers start delegating shopping to agents or doing their shopping through an LLM, the retailers who will win will be those ready to deliver seamless, trusted, consistent experiences through those agents,” Burton said in a statement.

Google extends virtual try-on to shoes

Google announced last week that it has expanded its generative AI-powered virtual try-on tool, which allows consumers to see items on a virtual version of their own likeness, to include shoes.

The company’s virtual try-on tool, which it expanded a few months ago , allows users to see how a single item of clothing might look on their own body. To test out the tool, users upload a full-body photo of themselves.

Google said it uses “state-of-the-art AI accurately perceives shapes and depths, preserving those subtleties when showing you what something would look like on you.”

Unlike some other companies, Google’s try-on experience is limited to one item at a time. So, for instance, if a consumer is checking out a pair of ASOS heels, they can’t also put a shirt of their choice on their digital avatar.

The experience seems like another play at customization as Big Tech companies continue to advance their AI-enabled offerings and consumers change their shopping patterns.

First Insight launches retail-focused conversational AI co-pilot 

First Insight announced this week that it’s allowing “major retailers” to beta test a new conversational AI co-pilot it calls Ellis.

First Insight did not disclose which of its clients have started participating in the beta test, but it partners with companies like Under Armour, Kohl’s, Francesca’s and Marks & Spencer.

Ellis is meant to help brands and retailers scenario plan, leveraging predictive analytics and natural language processing (NLP) to provide real-time insights that can shorten the decisioning process.

First Insight said Ellis can leverage internal data to help planners, merchandisers and other retail professionals with ensuring their assortments match consumers’ interests and expectations; understanding the best price point for specific items; forecasting demand; aligning marketing spends and campaigns with selling goals; compressing time to market and more.

First Insight is testing the tool as retailers head into the holiday season, which is one of the sector’s most critical timeframes of the calendar year. That’s especially true as the macroeconomic environment fluctuates and holiday spending among some generations, particularly Gen Z, is expected to decline.

Greg Petro, CEO of First Insight, said the tool will help brands and retailers bring data into many of the decisions they make, which can enrich decisioning and provide sound reasoning for their actions, rather than making decisions using gut feeling and historical spending patterns alone.

“Retail doesn’t win on intuition anymore,” Petro said in a statement. “Ellis turns signals into decisions—on product, price and promotions—at the moment retailers need them most and with a competitive understanding never before available. It’s about speed with confidence: protecting margins, finding growth and staying in step with customers as they shift.”