OpenAI Moves Commerce Focus to Brand-Owned ChatGPT Apps

OpenAI is shifting the focus of its commerce efforts to retailers’ ChatGPT apps after scaling back its plans to sell products directly through ChatGPT checkouts, The Information reported Wednesday (March 11).

An OpenAI spokesperson said this approach will give merchants greater control over the purchasing experience, according to the report.

The shift to in-app purchases has presented some challenges, the report said. Among them: ChatGPT users may consider the AI assistant to be primarily a research and chatting tool; shoppers may not know that the retailers’ ChatGPT apps exist or how to access them; and shoppers can instead follow links to a merchant’s website to make purchases there.

So far, although about 100 firms have ChatGPT apps, only one, Instacart, enables checkout within the ChatGPT app, per the report.

OpenAI announced in October that it enabled ChatGPT users to chat with several third-party apps while in conversation with the chatbot. The company did so by launching a feature called Apps in ChatGPT, together with an Apps SDK for developers that allows them to build these kinds of apps.

“The magic of this new generation of apps in ChatGPT is how they blend familiar interactive elements — like maps, playlists and presentations — with new ways of interacting through conversation,” the company said at the time in a press release.

Instacart announced in December that it integrated its app with ChatGPT, enabling Instacart to offer an embedded shopping and checkout experience within ChatGPT conversations.

“Together, we’re creating a seamless and secure way for people to turn simple conversations into real-world action — helping customers go from inspiration to a full cart delivered from the store to their door with ease,” Instacart Chief Technology Officer Anirban Kundu said at the time in a press release.

Also in December, OpenAI opened its ChatGPT App Directory, which is a marketplace of third-party apps that run directly within the ChatGPT interface. The marketplace allows developers to submit apps for review and publication, users to discover and use those apps without leaving ChatGPT, and brands to integrate their services directly into the AI chat experience and without asking users to switch platforms.

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