Google said Sunday that it is expanding the shopping features in its AI chatbot by teaming up with Walmart, Shopify, Wayfair and other big retailers to turn the Gemini app into a virtual merchant as well as an assistant. An instant checkout function will allow customers to make purchases from some businesses and through a range of payment providers without leaving the Gemini chat they used to find products, according to Walmart and Google. The news was announced on the first day of the National Retail Federation's annual convention in New York. The role of artificial intelligence in e-commerce and its impact on consumer behavior are expected to dominate the three-day event. The transition from traditional web or app search to agent-led commerce represents the next great evolution in retail," John Furner, Walmart's incoming president and CEO, said in a joint statement with Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichaei. Google's new AI shopping feature works this way: if a customer asks wha