OpenAI Pulled Back on Transactions. Google Is Pushing Ahead — Travel May Be Next

OpenAI pulled back earlier this month from enabling direct AI transactions inside ChatGPT. Google is moving in the opposite direction.

The company announced Thursday new Universal Commerce Protocol capabilities for cart management, real-time catalog access, and loyalty program integration. 

Ashish Gupta, vice president and general manager of merchant shopping, described UCP as “an open standard to help make online shopping easier for everyone.” It lets AI agents browse, negotiate, and complete shopping purchases on a user’s behalf for physical products. 

Travel, for now, still lingers on UCP’s short list of exclusions for digital goods and services, though it’s expected to follow suit, after retail has been hammered out. 

Even without travel-specific tools, developers are already building toward that possibility — trying to adapt the protocol for bookings before Google has built the systems needed to support