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Hello, hello! 👋🏻
Just back from NRF in NYC and I remember when mobile shopping felt optional. Then suddenly it was 60% of your traffic.
AI commerce is hitting that same inflection point as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Bing, and Amazon all fight for your wallet.
The number: AI-driven traffic to retail sites jumped 693% during the 2025 holiday season (Adobe).
Google and Shopify just announced last week a new way on how products get discovered and purchased. It's called Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), and here's why it matters even if you don’t do ecommerce.
The Future of Tech. One Daily News Briefing.
AI is moving faster than any other technology cycle in history. New models. New tools. New claims. New noise.
Most people feel like they’re behind. But the people that don’t, aren’t smarter. They’re just better informed.
Forward Future is a daily news briefing for people who want clarity, not hype. In one concise newsletter each day, you’ll get the most important AI and tech developments, learn why they matter, and what they signal about what’s coming next.
We cover real product launches, model updates, policy shifts, and industry moves shaping how AI actually gets built, adopted, and regulated. Written for operators, builders, leaders, and anyone who wants to sound sharp when AI comes up in the meeting.
It takes about five minutes to read, but the edge lasts all day.
What Is UCP?
Think of it as the API layer that lets AI assistants actually buy stuff.
How it works:
Discover — AI finds your products through standardized data
Transact — Customer completes purchase inside the AI interface
Support — Order tracking and returns flow through the same channel
No redirects. No friction. I saw a Google demo at NRF where you asked for a basket of products for a party, and every time you added or removed a product, it changed the image courtesy of nano-bana. Then the most impressive part when you went to purchase, it bought all of the products in a single transaction
Who's backing it: Target, Walmart, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Visa, Shopify, Amex, and 20+ industry heavyweights. This isn't vaporware.
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Why It Matters for Your Brand
1. High-Intent Visibility Your products can appear in Google AI Mode and Gemini at the exact moment customers are ready to buy. One integration = multiple AI platforms.
2. Zero Checkout Friction AI handles cart, discounts, and payment using the customer's saved info. Real-time inventory prevents the "sorry, out of stock" abandonment problem.
3. You Keep Control
You remain merchant of record
Your pricing rules apply
Your data stays yours
No platform lock-in (it's an open standard)
Lots of folks are going to sit on this and see if ChatGPT and their alternative with Stripe catches up but get on waitlist and test it. This is a complicated one and it's going to take some real tweaking to get it right for your brand.
The brands visible to AI agents will win. The ones who aren't? They'll wonder where their traffic went.
Cheers,
Alec
P.S. If that was not big enough remember Ads are coming to the free plans in ChatGPT
