Is ChatGPT's New Personal Shopping Tool an Existential Threat to Online Retail?

OpenAI is pushing into e-commerce with a new shopping research tool in ChatGPT, which generates personalized buyer's guides to help users with purchasing decisions, as reported by Bloomberg. The feature marks a direct challenge to established retail and search giants.

• Your AI personal shopper: The feature acts as a built-in research assistant, creating custom buyer's guides from user queries. It can be triggered automatically by prompts or selected manually from the user menu, and is being rolled out to all users on both free and paid plans.

• From chat to checkout: The move is part of OpenAI's larger ambition to build a complete commerce ecosystem, connecting product discovery directly to purchasing. The company plans to eventually integrate the shopping tool with its 'Instant Checkout' feature, creating a seamless path from research to transaction.

• Read the fine print: OpenAI claims the recommendations are impartial and drawn from public web data. But the company admits the tool isn't perfect, warning that details like pricing and product availability could be wrong and should be double-checked by the user.

The launch positions ChatGPT as a direct challenger to Google, Amazon, and other more traditional online retailers in the lucrative world of product search and online shopping, shifting the AI battleground from information retrieval to direct commerce.

But OpenAI isn't alone in the AI shopping race, as Google and Perplexity are also developing AI shopping agents. Meanwhile, the company is also making moves in the physical world, reportedly tapping Foxconn to build AI hardware in the U.S..