U.S. artificial intelligence startup OpenAI announced on Monday the launch of an instant checkout feature within ChatGPT, potentially reshaping the e-commerce experience and posing a direct challenge to Google's search market share.
OpenAI stated that it will allow U.S. users to shop directly through ChatGPT using the new instant checkout functionality, powered by an AI payment protocol developed by Stripe.
The new ChatGPT shopping feature represents a significant step in helping OpenAI monetize its 700 million weekly users, many of whom currently pay nothing to interact with ChatGPT. This move could ultimately capture substantial market share from traditional Google search advertising.
The rollout of ChatGPT's shopping capabilities—including the possibility of AI agents shopping on behalf of users—could also disrupt e-commerce, fundamentally changing how businesses design websites and market to consumers.
OpenAI announced it will launch the instant checkout feature with Etsy sellers but will "soon" begin adding over one million Shopify merchants, including brands like Glossier, Skims, Spanx, and Vuori.
The company also stated it is open-sourcing the Agent Commerce Protocol, a payment standard developed in partnership with payment processing company Stripe that powers the instant checkout feature, allowing any retailer or business to decide to establish shopping integration with ChatGPT. (Stripe's protocol is based on the open-source Model Context Protocol developed by AI company Anthropic.)
OpenAI will collect a small fee from merchants for each purchase, helping to boost the company's revenue as it spends billions of dollars annually to train and support the operation of its AI models.
OpenAI previously launched a shopping feature in ChatGPT to help users find products best suited for them, but the suggested results would then link to merchant websites where users had to complete their purchases—similar to how Google search works. When ChatGPT users ask shopping-related questions, such as "best hiking boots under $150 for me" or "possible birthday gifts for my 10-year-old nephew," the chatbot provides product recommendations.
Under the new system, if users like one of the suggestions and have instant checkout enabled, they can click the "Buy" button in the chatbot's response and confirm their order, shipping, and payment details without leaving the chat.
OpenAI stated that its "product search results are natural and unsponsored, ranked purely based on relevance to the user." The company also emphasized that results are not influenced by fees merchants pay to support instant checkout.
The company noted that when displaying results, "ChatGPT considers factors such as availability, price, quality, whether the merchant is a primary seller, and whether instant payment is enabled."
OpenAI stated that ChatGPT users who pay monthly fees for premium features will be able to use the credit or debit card they pay subscription fees with, or store other payment methods.
Currently, OpenAI says users retain control and must explicitly agree to each step of the purchase process before taking any action. However, it's easy to imagine that in the future, users might be able to authorize ChatGPT or other AI models to act more "agentically" and make purchases for users based on prompts without reconfirming with the user.
The fact that users don't need to leave the chat interface to make purchases could pose a challenge to Alphabet's Google, which derives most of its revenue from directing users to company websites. While Google might launch similar shopping features in its Gemini chatbot or "AI mode" in Google Search, it remains unclear whether it would charge fees for transactions completed through these AI-native methods to compensate for lost referral revenue and opportunities to display other ads around chatbot queries.