Ulta Beauty Deploys Google-Powered AI Assistant and Agentic Commerce

Shoppers looking for beauty products will soon be able to get personalized assistance powered by artificial intelligence on Google surfaces and on Ulta Beauty’s digital properties.

These shopping experiences will be enabled by solutions launched by Ulta Beauty and powered by Google’s Gemini, the companies said in a Wednesday (April 22) press release.

In one new offering, Ulta Beauty is set to launch agentic commerce across Google surfaces, including AI Mode in Search and the Gemini app. This will be rolled out over the next month, making the Ulta Beauty assortment shoppable within these surfaces.

With this agentic commerce experience, shoppers can receive product recommendations, compare options and complete checkout for eligible purchases within Google’s conversational interfaces.

The experience will be powered by Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), the open standard for agentic commerce, according to the release.

The other new offering announced Wednesday is a new AI shopping assistant called Ulta AI that is now available on Ulta.com and will soon be added to the Ulta Beauty App.

Ulta AI leverages insights from the beauty retailer’s 46 million members to provide shoppers with personalized guidance as they navigate the digital assortment.

This AI shopping assistant was built with Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience, per the release.

Google introduced Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience in January, describing it as a platform designed to help retailers deploy AI agents that can support shopping, ordering and customer service across digital channels.

The tech giant also debuted the Universal Commerce Protocol in January, saying this agentic commerce standard is designed to “work across the entire shopping journey.”

PYMNTS reported Wednesday that beauty giants are racing to own the AI shopping moment. They are doing so because the discovery layer is shifting from owned retail surfaces to third-party AI interfaces, according to the report.

Ulta Beauty said in March that AI contributed to the retailer’s better-than-planned financial performance in the fourth quarter. AI in Ulta Beauty’s automated marketing engine added to the company’s gains by enabling personalization that provided customers with content that was relevant, dynamic and timely, Ulta Beauty President and CEO Kecia Steelman said during an earnings call.