AI shopping may be going mainstream.
On Tuesday, Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, announced a partnership with OpenAI to shake up the e-commerce experience. Shoppers can now make direct Walmart purchases through the ChatGPT app and plan their purchases around their individual meals and needs.
“For many years now, eCommerce shopping experiences have consisted of a search bar and a long list of item responses,” Doug McMillon, CEO of Walmart Inc., said in a statement. “That is about to change.”
The move marks an expansion of Walmart’s partnership with OpenAI, which has so far been focused on more internal use of the AI company’s tools. Walmart launched a new AI skills training program for employees this summer, and last month rolled out access to the enterprise-grade ChatGPT for Sam’s Club workers.
At the same time, Walmart has been developing its own in-house army of AI agents, such as the AI assistant Sparky, which perform some of the same tasks as OpenAI’s products.
However, when asked whether he has a preference for shoppers using Walmart’s tools or those made by another company, Walmart US CEO John Furner said last month that he’s only concerned with making it easier for shoppers to buy from Walmart.
“We want to make sure we’re building in the flexibility that you can shop however you want,” he said. “Whether that comes off of our marketplace — it’s pickup, delivery, it’s our stores — I need to make sure that we’re just there to prepare you the way that you want to be served.”
Several retail analysts said this partnership is yet another way Walmart is pulling ahead of the competition when it comes to integrating AI throughout its operations.
“We view this as a major step forward in the adoption and broader acceleration of agentic commerce,” Mizuho analyst David Bellinger said in a note. “Walmart is clearly ahead of the curve here, while others have been slow to adapt or even made efforts to block AI web crawlers.”
Agentic shopping refers to a new model of e-commerce where an AI agent handles consumers’ product searches, comparisons, and even purchases. A shopper could input queries such as what kind of cereal to purchase based on their flavor preference, and an agent may spit out a list of recommendations, and then make the purchase on the customer’s behalf.
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Tuesday’s announcement also shows that AI-assisted shopping is shaping up to be more than just a fleeting phase.
In September, ChatGPT also pushed further into the retail market by partnering with Stripe to create the “Instant Checkout” button, where users could directly buy an item in the chat. Merchants usually have to pay a small fee for this feature, and it is unclear how the algorithm works when it comes to shopping recommendations for users. The rollout has already been adopted by Etsy sellers in the US for some single-item purchases.
Opening up retail to a brand new way of shopping also comes with less control over listings and traffic, which are risks that e-commerce giant Amazon has been reluctant to take. While Walmart and Target have doubled down on agent shopping with external partnerships like ChatGPT, Amazon has restricted open access to its product listings, and most of its products do not consistently appear on AI chatbots.
Meanwhile, Amazon is going all in on its internal AI tool named Rufus, which is embedded in Amazon’s search bar and acts as a shopping assistant. It is currently unable to directly shop for consumers, but it protects Amazon’s $56 billion advertising business, which relies on the traffic of shoppers visiting its site and not shopping through an external chatbot.
With 50 million shopping-related queries flowing through ChatGPT on a daily basis, this holiday season will be a test of whether agent shopping can truly drive sales for Walmart.
“We’re still learning how these strategies are going to go,” Furner said in last month’s remarks. “I don’t think we know yet where it’s going to end, but we do know that the work that we’re doing with our agent, Sparky, is a great place to start.”
Now you can add ChatGPT to that list.
