OpenAI announced the latest evolution of its widely used chatbot. ChatGPT now enables users to find products and complete purchases with its new agentic commerce capabilities. Developed in partnership with Stripe, this new Instant Checkout offering is designed to help sellers reach the 700 million people leveraging ChatGPT weekly.
ChatGPT Plus, Pro and Free users in the U.S. can buy single items directly from domestic Etsy sellers in the chat interface. When a user prompts ChatGPT with a shopping-related query, they’ll receive unsponsored and relevant results, according to OpenAI. If the new Instant Checkout function is offered for one of those products, the user can select “Buy,” and confirm their order, shipping and payment details to complete the purchase without leaving the chat.
“…AI-powered and agentic shopping present meaningful opportunities for the unique items on Etsy to shine. These tools offer deeper insights into our inventory, enabling our sellers’ items to starkly stand out against the sea of impersonal, mass-produced goods,” Rafe Colburn, Etsy’s CTO, wrote in a company blog post about the OpenAI partnership. “The human connection these items create will always be the heart of our marketplace. We’re excited to leverage AI to make it easier than ever for shoppers to discover and connect with sellers who offer items they love.”
Shopify merchants, including Glossier, Spanx, Vuori, Away, Stanley 1913 and Steve Madden, will be available for Instant Checkout down the line, as will the ability to purchase multiple items at once from sellers in more regions.
Shopify works to provide real-time pricing, images and product variants, according to the company, so when a ChatGPT user asks for recommendations, a merchant’s inventory will become accessible for immediate purchase. Upon its integration into ChatGPT, Shopify will grant its merchants control over whether consumers complete purchases through the Instant Checkout experience or their online store.
OpenAI is also open-sourcing its agentic commerce protocol, enabling merchants and developers to build their own integrations that allow AI agents, humans and businesses to collaborate and complete purchases.
