One of the worst parts of online shopping is trying to figure out whether an item of clothing will actually fit. While some brands have begun hiring models with more diverse body types, the process still often requires a leap of faith--or making a lot of returns. Google announced Tuesday that it's rolling out a new way to tackle the fit guessing problem using generative artificial intelligence. Brands that run ads for women's or men's shirts will now have the ability to show shoppers how the products look on dozens of different real models, without taking additional photos. The new feature means that typing in "eyelet crop top" on Google's search engine, for example, could return an ad with a clickable gallery that shows what an item looks like on women with different skin tones and body types.

Google says it's implementing AI and machine learning techniques to improve story suggestions in Google Search. In a blog post this morning, the tech giant announced that users in the U.S. in English (with more languages and locations to come in the next few months) who search for a news topic will now see an article carousel at the top of the results page. When there are multiple stories related to a search, each will be organized by relevance and quality in a way that accounts for a diversity of perspectives. "People come to Search for all types of information to help them form a better understanding of the world and the topics they care about most," wrote Google Search product manager Duncan Osborn. "We've continued to bring new improvements to Search to help people better orient themselves around a topic and easily explore related ideas, so they can more quickly go from having a question in mind to developing deeper understanding … Our research has shown that clustering results into clearly-defined stories is critical in helping people easily navigate the results and identify the best content for their needs." Osborn says that as of today, Google Search structures story results with better context.

Real-time bidding is an aspect of digital marketing that can seem overly complex for the average bear, so it was only a matter of time before AI entered the picture. This week, Google brought machine learning into the process to help make it easier. Tapping some of the same artificial-intelligence technologies that have already appeared in Google Photos and AlphaGo, Smart Bidding is a new capability for conversion-based automated bidding across AdWords and DoubleClick Search to help companies determine their optimal bid for any given campaign or portfolio. It can factor in millions of signals, Google says, and continually refines models of users' conversion performance at different bid levels. "Smart Bidding's learning capabilities quickly maximize the accuracy of your bidding models to improve how you optimize the long-tail," Anthony Chavez, Google's product management director for search ads, wrote in a blog post explaining the new service.