Inkoli | iStock | getty images
When OpenAI announced its instant checkout feature last fall, retailers sprang into action.
Etsy, wal-mart And Shopify It was quickly lined up to allow users to purchase products from merchants directly within its ChatGPAT chatbot. Suddenly, the world of e-commerce became centered on shopping agents, artificial intelligence tools that can make purchases on behalf of users.
Shopify President harley finkelstein It was called the “new frontier” for online retail.
After several months, OpenAI and its retail partners are back at the drawing board.
The AI startup is moving away from instant checkout and is now working with retailers to build dedicated apps within ChatGPT. This approach will redirect users to the retailer’s own website to complete a purchase, giving those companies more control over the customer experience and transaction process.
“OpenAI underestimated how difficult it was going to be to enable transactions, which on the one hand is a little surprising, but on the other hand, it’s not going to be easy for retailers,” Bob Hetu, an analyst at Gartner, told CNBC in an interview.
An OpenAI spokesperson said it is prioritizing better search and product discovery in chatbots, two areas where it has seen some early trends in adoption by users.
“Instant checkout is moving toward apps where purchases can happen more intuitively,” an OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement.
Information Was the first to report OpenAI’s pivot.
The change in strategy has raised questions about whether tech companies and their retail partners oversell the readiness of shopping bots. It also highlights the challenges that AI startups may face as they attempt to transform the e-commerce landscape that is dominated by existing giants Amazon.
OpenAI is racing to keep pace with rivals like Google And Anthropic launched a flurry of new offerings and experiences last year in an effort to grow its market share and create new revenue sources. As buyers turn to ChatGate to ask questions about products, e-commerce has emerged as a potentially lucrative opportunity.
While OpenAI is trying to figure out its commerce strategy, competitors like Google aren’t sitting still.
google on thursday Issued New updates to its shopping agent platform that enable its systems to load product data in real-time, preventing mishaps like out-of-stocks and pricing errors. It also lets users add multiple items to their cart and connect loyalty memberships – two features OpenAI hasn’t fully cracked yet.
the agent stumbles
OpenAI initially billed Instant Checkout is “the next step in agentic commerce, where ChatGPT not only helps you find what to buy, but it also helps you buy it.”
The company said it would charge “a small fee” on each transaction, but declined to disclose any additional financial details.
OpenAI said at the time of the announcement that products from US Etsy sellers would be available to purchase directly in ChatGPT, and that it expected to add items from “over one million” Shopify merchants at some point.
Onboarding merchants became a difficult process and instant checkout was prone to errors, said Emily Pfeiffer, principal analyst at Forrester. As of last month, he said, about 30 Shopify merchants were available through instant checkout.
Walmart made approximately 200,000 products available for purchase inside ChatGPT, the company confirmed. It’s unclear how many Etsy products made it to the service.
Pfeifer said in an interview that OpenAI could scrape some retailers’ websites to get data on products encountered in ChatGPTT, but that meant whether items were still in stock, estimated delivery times or shipping costs could be inaccurate or out of date.
“Crawling and scraping is insufficient to get the full breadth of product data you need to do a good job of commerce,” Pfeffer said.
“I think it wasn’t the ideal shopping experience, but it’s not the death of agentic commerce,” he said.
‘Adoption takes time’
OpenAI introduced apps sdk at its annual developer conference in October, and began adding dedicated retail apps to chatbots from Instacart, Target And many online travel agencies last year.
Shopify has confirmed that a new e-commerce experience is coming to ChatGPT.
Shoppers will still be able to search for products from Shopify merchants within the chatbot, but checkout will no longer be native there. Instead, purchases will be completed through merchants’ own online stores, either within the in-app browser in the ChatGPT mobile app or in a separate browser tab on the web, the company said.
Merchants will not need to create apps for ChatGPT to participate in that experience.
a brown investor conference Earlier this month, one of Walmart’s top AI executives telegraphed that OpenAI’s commerce strategy is in change. He called instant checkout “a very temporary moment in time.”
“By this time next month, you won’t see that experience,” Daniel Danker, Walmart’s executive vice president of AI acceleration, product and design, said at Morgan Stanley’s Tech, Media & Telecom conference on March 4.
A shopper pushes a cart outside a Walmart store in San Leandro, California, U.S., on Tuesday, August 19, 2025.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | getty images
A Walmart spokesperson confirmed to CNBC that the company plans to integrate its Sparky AI assistant into ChatGPIT as soon as next week.
An Etsy spokesperson also confirmed that the online marketplace is developing a ChatGPT app. He noted that the timing and direction remain fluid, so an application cannot be the final state for how Etsy products appear in the chatbot.
The spokesperson said an app would give more control over the look and experience of shopping at ChatGPT. This provides retailers and marketplaces with more buyer data than ever before across the purchase journey versus instant checkout, which only gives a view of a transaction after someone makes a purchase, he said.
Pfeiffer said the current ChatGPAT app experience “leaves a lot to be desired” and there is no guarantee it will be a successful model for AI shopping.
“Right now, I don’t see success with ChatGPT in retail apps,” Pfeifer said. “That doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Adoption takes time.”
Early data indicates that although shoppers are increasingly turning to AI chatbots for product research and recommendations, they are not completing their purchases in a chat window.
Adobe-owned SEMrush found that only 22% of users purchased a product with an AI tool inside, based on a survey Released to more than 1,000 US consumers earlier this month. Half of the respondents said they made a purchase after using AI during research.
Walmart said it found that conversion rates, or the percentage of users making a purchase, for products sold directly in ChatGPAT were three times lower than for products that sent users to the retailer’s website for checkout. wired Walmart reported the data first.
The spokesperson said Etsy saw that ChatGPT had become a valuable discovery channel for online shoppers, although purchase volume from Instant Checkout was relatively low because the technology is still new.
Pfeffer said retailers who are seeing traffic from chatbots or believe their product is suitable for that type of experience will likely invest in the platform, if they can afford to.
For Etsy, he said, the ChatGPT app could encourage more sellers to join the platform because it allows them to be visible in a new marketing channel.
Amazon, the elephant in the room
Bank of America Securities analysts said in a recent research note that OpenAI’s new app-based approach “could enable more partners like Amazon,” as it allows retailers to more closely manage user experience and payments in ChatGate.
Amazon has deepened its relationship with OpenAI in recent weeks.
The companies last month unveiled a strategic partnership with Amazon investing up to $50 billion in OpenAI. As part of the agreement, OpenAI will make its AI models available to Amazon engineers to develop consumer products.
The companies did not specify which products might be included.
At the same time, Amazon has also distanced itself from AI shopping partnership. The company has blocked dozens of agents, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, from accessing its site.
Amazon sued Perplexity in November to try to block the startup’s Comet browser from scraping and making purchases for users on its website. The legal battle is already entangled.
distress called Amazon’s lawsuit is a “bald attempt” to deter shoppers from using Comet because AI agents “do not have eyes to see the pervasive advertising that Amazon is bombarding its users with and cannot encourage them to purchase more products.”
Amazon continues to invest in its own tools, such as the Rufus shopping chatbot and “Buy for Me” agents. The company has also expanded its “Shop Direct” feature, which allows consumers to browse and purchase products that are not sold on its site.
As OpenAI works to refine its approach to e-commerce, Hetu said consumers shouldn’t count out the company, even though it faces stiff competition.
Pfeiffer said it’s still early days for AI shopping as a whole.
“Everyone thinks everyone else has it figured out, or they’re way ahead of them,” Pfeiffer said. “The truth is that no one found out.”
Watch: The advertising industry has been disappointed by ChatGPIT’s ad rollout.
