By Emma Roth
Publication Date: 2026-02-04 12:00:00
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) 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 expresses 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 that it will soon allow users to buy products directly within Gemini through the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), a standard it 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 just how much user information — and what kinds — Google plans on providing to retailers through this pipeline.
“Google already possesses unprecedented troves of user search and AI chat data, and such intimate data could be merged with both user data from other Google…
