Walmart has partnered with OpenAI to allow its customers to shop for products and pay directly from within ChatGPT.
The world’s largest retailer’s embrace of “AI-first” shopping ushers in the new era using artificial-intelligence-powered chatbots as agents for shopping. The idea is that users will no longer have to click through and navigate a website or a shopping app, and could instead instruct a chatbot to buy goods on their behalf.
“For many years now, ecommerce shopping experiences have consisted of a search bar and a long list of item responses. That is about to change,” said Doug McMillon, chief executive of Walmart. “There is a native AI experience coming that is multimedia, personalized and contextual.”
Shoppers can now prompt ChatGPT to plan meals, restock household items or discover new items. The chatbot curates products where users can tap “Buy” to confirm their items, shipping and payment details. This one-click buy feature known as “instant checkout” is enabled through OpenAI’s partnership with payments company Stripe.
“We’re excited to partner with Walmart to make everyday purchases a little simpler,” OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman said in a statement.
OpenAI’s partnership with Walmart demonstrates how it is leveraging its technology to expand its presence and build a tech ecosystem that even the world’s largest companies feel compelled to join. It is leveraging its large user base for shopping and finance assistants, creating its own devices, launching a TikTok-like social media app, and designing its own chipsets to power data centers.
The OpenAI partnership will build on Walmart’s ongoing AI push. It already has an in-app AI-shopping assistant called Sparky that recommends products and summarizes reviews for shoppers.
Last year, Amazon launched its own in-app shopping assistant, named Rufus.
ChatGPT has 800 million weekly active users, and has already reshaped consumer behavior with many using it as a shopping consultant. The chatbot can learn from its back-and-forth with each person, which will enable it to understand, plan and predict what customers want, the companies said.
Americans, however, are still skeptical about AI shopping assistants, according to a YouGov survey early this year.
For OpenAI, this is another step in making its powerful models useful for the mass market and also opening up avenues for revenue generation by shifting from a passive answering and reasoning machine to a proactive shopping agent that, in theory, could earn commissions or fees for its services.
Late last month, OpenAI introduced a common standard for any brand to integrate into ChatGPT. Etsy and Shopify were the two pilot merchants who partnered with OpenAI to test and incorporate shopping inside ChatGPT.
Merchants pay a small fee on completed purchases, but the service is free for users.
OpenAI said the service doesn’t influence ChatGPT’s product results. When ranking multiple merchants, ChatGPT considers factors such as quality, availability, price and whether Stripe’s Instant Checkout is enabled.
