New Delhi, Jan. 12 -- Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the launch of the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), saying that artificial intelligence (AI) agents will play a major role in the way people shop in the near future.

In a social media post, Pichai said, "AI agents will be a big part of how we shop in the not-so-distant future. To help lay the groundwork, we partnered with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target and Walmart to create the Universal Commerce Protocol, a new open standard for agents and systems to talk to each other across every step of the shopping journey. And coming soon, UCP will power native checkout so you can buy directly on AI Mode and the Gemini app."

He said AI agents will become an important part of the shopping jo...