OpenAI and Google Refine Early AI Commerce Strategies

Tech companies are adjusting their approaches to artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled commerce after encountering some hurdles in their first attempts, CNBC reported Friday (March 20).

OpenAI recently confirmed that it is ending its feature that allowed users to check out in ChatGPT, Instant Checkout, and shifting its focus to facilitating sales through retailers’ dedicated apps within the chatbot, according to the report.

One of the problems that the company encountered while offering Instant Checkout was that the feature didn’t always show real-time information on items, the report said.

An OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC that the company is now prioritizing two aspects of shopping that have been most popular with ChatGPT users: search and product discovery.

“Instant Checkout is moving to Apps, where purchases can happen more seamlessly,” the spokesperson said, per the report.

It was reported March 11 that OpenAI had scaled back its plans to sell products directly through ChatGPT checkouts and was shifting the focus of its commerce efforts to retailers’ ChatGPT apps.

That report said ChatGPT users may consider the AI assistant to be primarily a research and chatting tool; shoppers may not know that retailers’ ChatGPT exist or how to access them; and shoppers can instead follow links to a merchant’s website to make purchases there.

Another tech firm that recently made an adjustment is Google, which updated its shopping agent platform Thursday (March 19), according to Friday’s CNBC report.

Google’s updates enable the platform to load real-time product data, let users add multiple items to their carts, and allow users to connect loyalty memberships, the report said.

With these updates, Google aims to prevent out-of-stocks, pricing errors and other problems that can arise when product data is not up to date, per the report.

PYMNTS reported Thursday that Google had worked with “community contributors” on new options for its agentic commerce standard Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP).

Addressing UCP’s new support for Identity Linking, the company said: “That allows shoppers on UCP-integrated platforms to receive the same loyalty or member benefits they would on a retailer’s site when they’re logged in — like pricing or free shipping — making shopping more connected across the web.”

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