Walmart has partnered with OpenAI to allow its customers to buy products and pay directly from ChatGPT.
The world's largest retailer's adoption of an AI-first approach to shopping is ushering in a new era of using AI-powered chatbots as shopping agents. The idea is that users will no longer have to click and navigate around a website or app to shop, but instead can instruct a chatbot to purchase items on their behalf.
“For years, the e-commerce shopping experience has consisted of a search bar and a long list of product responses. That's about to change,” said Doug McMillon, chief executive of Walmart. “Native AI experiences are coming that are multimedia, personalized and contextual.”
Shoppers can now ask ChatGPT to plan meals, restock household items, or discover new items. The chatbot curates products where users can click “Buy” to confirm their items, shipping and payment information. This one-click purchasing feature, known as “instant checkout,” is available through OpenAI's partnership with payments company Stripe.
“We’re excited to partner with Walmart to make everyday shopping a little easier,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement.
OpenAI's partnership with Walmart demonstrates how the company is using its technology to expand its reach and create a tech ecosystem that even the world's largest companies are forced to join. It leverages its large user base for shopping and financial assistantscreating your own devices, launching Social networks like TikTok application and development of your own chipsets for powering data centers.
The OpenAI partnership will build on Walmart's ongoing development in artificial intelligence. It already has an in-app AI shopping assistant called Sparky which recommends products and summarizes reviews for customers.
Last year, Amazon launched its own in-app shopping assistant called Rufus.
ChatGPT has 800 million weekly active users and has already changed consumer behavior, many of whom use it as a shopping advisor. The chatbot can learn by interacting with each person, allowing it to understand, plan and predict what customers want, the companies say.
However, Americans remain skeptical about AI shopping assistants, according to YouGov poll earlier this year.
For OpenAI, this is another step toward making its powerful models useful to the mass market, while also opening up revenue opportunities by moving from a passive answering and reasoning machine to an active sales agent who could theoretically earn commissions or fees for its services.
Late last month OpenAI introduced a single standard for any brand to integrate into ChatGPT. Etsy and Shopify were two pilot merchants that partnered with OpenAI to test and enable shopping on ChatGPT.
Sellers pay a small commission on completed purchases, but the service is free for users.
OpenAI stated that this service does not affect the results of the ChatGPT product. When ranking multiple sellers, ChatGPT considers factors such as quality, availability, price, and whether Stripe instant verification is enabled.
