You may have recently bought something on Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) or eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY), but your next online purchase may take place on ChatGPT.
OpenAI recently launched Instant Checkout, its agentic commerce protocol. This new feature can make it easier for people to buy products online while staying on ChatGPT.
Instant Checkout marks a big step in ChatGPT’s push toward agentic commerce. The company wants to act like an on-demand virtual assistant that offers personalized product recommendations.
ChatGPT’s shift into e-commerce can pose a challenge to Google and Amazon as it aims to win over visitors.
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OpenAI’s E-Commerce Partnerships
Just like Amazon in its early days, OpenAI doesn’t have an inventory of products that it can readily offer to consumers. Instead of buying warehouses, OpenAI has joined forces with Etsy (NASDAQ:ETSY) and Shopify (NASDAQ:SHOP). U.S. customers can buy directly from U.S. Etsy sellers in ChatGPT, while more than 1 million Shopify merchants will join them very soon.
Etsy and Shopify shares rallied to 52-week highs on the news last week and are firmly outperforming the stock market year-to-date. OpenAI may partner with more e-commerce platforms, including Amazon, in the future. However, even if Amazon partners with OpenAI to retain customers, the e-commerce giant won’t make as much from online ads if everyone does their shopping on ChatGPT.
Other large language models like Gemini and Grok may support e-commerce shopping in the future, and it may be the biggest innovation in the industry since Amazon’s e-commerce platform and Sears’ mail-order catalog in the late 19th century and for most of the 1900s.
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ChatGPT Gets More Involved In People’s Lives
The push into e-commerce can more deeply integrate ChatGPT into people’s lives. It can be the tool you use for everything. It combines Google’s ability to find information on any subject with Amazon’s ability to let you buy various products and receive enticing product recommendations. However, ChatGPT can also do the shopping for you, just like a virtual assistant.
“This marks the next step in agentic commerce, where ChatGPT doesn’t just help you find what to buy, it also helps you buy it,” OpenAI said in its statement. “For shoppers, it’s seamless: go from chat to checkout in just a few taps. For sellers, it’s a new way to reach hundreds of millions of people while keeping full control of their payments, systems, and customer relationships.”
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How Instant Checkout Works
If you request ChatGPT to show you products, the AI tool will show some of the top choices, along with prices. The company currently doesn’t allow ad placements for its product recommendations.
“Product results are organic and unsponsored, ranked purely on relevance to the user,” OpenAI said.
Users can then tap “Buy,” tell ChatGPT where they want to ship it, and make the payment while staying on ChatGPT. You don’t have to go to a third-party website to fill in your payment information. ChatGPT uses the credit card information you put in your account to make the order.
ChatGPT makes money from a small merchant fee, but this feature is free for users. Participating e-commerce sites must support Instant Checkout to allow ChatGPT users to buy right from the chat.
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