OpenAI launched a “richer, more visually immersive” shopping experience in ChatGPT that lets users browse products with images, compare options side-by-side with pricing and reviews, and refine results conversationally. The experience is powered by an expansion of its Agentic Commerce Protocol that connects merchant product feeds directly into ChatGPT.
The company wrote:
“Shopping on the web is easy if you already know what you want. But when you’re still deciding, it often means jumping between tabs, reading the same “best of” lists, and trying to piece together the right answer. ChatGPT solves that: figuring out what to buy… What used to take hours of searching and tab-hopping now happens in seconds.”
Earlier this month I reported that OpenAI abandoned its plans to introduce shopping directly inside the general ChatGPT chatbot, pivoting instead to a focus on having checkouts take place inside of specific apps.
Now it appears that the company is doubling down on product discovery, which frankly, it should have started with! Why did OpenAI think it could successfully complete purchases for users before it even mastered finding the right products for them?
Focusing on product discovery is absolutely the right move for OpenAI right now, especially as it looks to grow its advertising business tenfold, as product search and discovery lends itself perfectly to advertising. However, OpenAI still has a long road ahead to getting it right. See my post on LinkedIn for more details about that.
Target, Sephora, Nordstrom, Lowe's, Best Buy, The Home Depot, and Wayfair have already integrated with ACP for discovery, while Shopify merchants are automatically included through Shopify Catalog with no additional setup required (more on that below). The update rolls out this week to all free, Go, Plus, and Pro users.