Walmart Inc. (WMT) is doubling down on artificial intelligence with a new partnership that brings Google Gemini's conversational AI directly into its shopping experience. The move lets customers chat their way through product discovery and checkout at both Walmart and Sam's Club, because apparently typing what you want into a search bar is so 2023.

The Retail AI Arms Race Heats Up

Walmart and Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) (GOOG) unveiled the collaboration at the National Retail Federation's Big Show in New York City on Sunday. Incoming Walmart CEO John Furner and Google CEO Sundar Pichai jointly announced the integration, which will roll out first in the U.S. before heading overseas. Neither company disclosed financial terms or a specific launch date, because why spoil the mystery?

This isn't Walmart's first rodeo with AI shopping assistants. The retailer partnered with OpenAI's ChatGPT back in October to introduce "Instant Checkout," letting shoppers complete purchases without ever leaving the chatbot interface. The company is clearly betting that customers increasingly want AI to handle the tedious parts of shopping, whether that's finding the right product or avoiding the mental overhead of clicking through multiple pages.

AI Takes Over as Retail's Ultimate Middleman

The Walmart and Google partnership reflects how quickly AI has become the retail industry's most powerful intermediary. During Black Friday, AI-driven traffic jumped a staggering 805% year over year, according to Adobe estimates. Tools like Amazon's Rufus and ChatGPT are fundamentally changing how people shop, steering them toward deals and products they might never have found through traditional search.

Walmart isn't alone in this race. Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) recently launched its own suite of "agentic AI" tools designed to automate retail tasks across merchandising, marketing, store operations, and fulfillment. The goal is to make retail operations more efficient while creating more personalized shopping experiences. Translation: AI is coming for every aspect of how stores operate, not just the customer-facing stuff.

Walmart's Strong Performance Backdrop

Walmart is making these AI moves from a position of strength. The stock has climbed 24.76% over the past year, and recent quality rankings place it in the 93rd percentile for quality and the 74th percentile for momentum. On Friday, shares rose 1.29% to close at $114.53.

The message is clear: retailers believe conversational AI isn't just a gimmick but a fundamental shift in how commerce works. Whether customers actually want to chat with an AI to buy groceries remains to be seen, but the major players are betting heavily that they will.