OPENAI allows Chatgpt to start buying products directly from a conversation in a radical reshuffle of electronic commerce
OPENAI said that it will allow users of the United States to make purchases directly via Chatgpt using a new “Instant Checkout” feature powered by a payment protocol for AI developed by Stripe.
The new Chatbot purchase feature is a big step to help Openai monetize its 700 million weekly users, many of whom are currently paying nothing to interact with Chatgpt, as well as a decision that could possibly steal a large market share of traditional Google research.
The deployment of Chatbot purchase features – in particular the possibility of AI agents who will buy on behalf of users – could also upset electronic commerce, radically transform the way companies design their websites and try to market consumers.
Openai said that he was deploying his instant cash function with Etsy Sellers today, but would start adding more than a million Shopify traders, including brands such as glossier, skims, spanx and Vuori, “soon”.
The company also said that it was the opening of the “agent commercial protocol”, a payment standard developed in partnership with the payment processor band which feeds the instant payment function, so that any retailer or business can decide to create a purchase integration with Chatgpt. (The Stripe Protocol is in turn based on an “Open Source” model context protocol which was developed by the company Ai Anthropic.)
Openai will take what he described as the merchant’s low cost on each purchase, helping to strengthen the company’s income at a time when he burns several billion dollars each year to train and support the operation of his AI models.
How does it work
OPENAI had previously launched a shopping functionality in Chatgpt which helped users to find products that were best suited to them, but the suggested results then linked merchant websites where a user had to finish the purchase – similar to how a Google search works.
When a chatgpt user poses a question related to shopping – like “the best hiking boots for me that cost less than $ 150” or “possible birthday gifts for my 10 -year nephew” – The chatbot will always respond with product suggestions. As part of the new system, if a user likes one of the suggestions and instant payment is activated, he can click on a “Buy” button in the chatbot response and confirm his order, shipping and payment details without ever leaving the cat.
Openai said that its “product results are organic and not disseminated, classified only on the relevance for the user”. The company also stressed that the results are not allocated by the costs that the merchant pays it to support instant payment.
“Chatgpt considers that factors such as availability, price, quality, if a merchant is the main seller and if instant payment is activated,” when the results were displayed, said the company.
OPENAI said that chatgpt subscribers, who pay monthly costs for premium features, could use the same credit or debit card to which they charge their subscription or store alternative payment methods to use.
OPENAI’s decision to launch the purchase function using the Stripe agent sales protocol will be a big boost for this payment standard, which can be used on different AI platforms and also works with different payment processors, although it is easier to integrate it for existing Stripe customers. The protocol works by creating an encrypted token for payment details and other sensitive data.
Currently, Openai says that the user remains in control, having to explicitly accept each stage of the purchasing process before any action is taken. But it is easy to imagine that in the future, users can be able to authorize chatgpt or other AI models to act more “agents” and make purchases for the user according to an prompt, without having to return with a user.
The fact that users never have to leave the cat interface to make the purchase can make a challenge to Google alphabet, which earns most of its money by referring users to business websites. Although Google may be able to deploy similar purchase features within its Gemini chatbot or its “AI mode” in Google Search, it is difficult to know if what it could invoice for the transactions made in these AI-Native ways would compensate for any loss of reference income and what are the opportunities for the display of other advertisements around Chatbot requests.
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