US and Chinese artificial intelligence players are ramping up integration of e-commerce solutions in their flagship consumer products in a race to become the “everything app” of the future.
OpenAI on Monday unveiled a “shopping research” tool. The function, which can generate detailed shopping guides for ChatGPT users, comes just before the busy holiday shopping season and resembles popular AI shopping services on Chinese e-commerce platforms such as Tmall and Taobao of Alibaba Group Holding. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
After users describe what they want to buy with prompts such as “Best TVs for a bright room”, the AI searches the web for suitable products and then interacts with the user in a series of interactions to narrow down the selection, all within the chat interface.
In September, the San Francisco start-up introduced a feature called “instant checkout” that lets users make purchases from eligible vendors directly in ChatGPT. It said on Monday that shopping research would be integrated with instant checkout in the future.
Such “all-in-one” apps are the norm in China, where vertically integrated tech giants such as Alibaba and ByteDance are also deepening the instant e-commerce features of their AI chatbot apps.
Last month, Beijing-based ByteDance announced the integration of its flagship AI app Doubao with its e-commerce marketplace Douyin, which is embedded in the domestic version of the company’s TikTok short-video platform.
