Last week, whilst Americans were asking ChatGPT to help them draft emails and debug code, OpenAI quietly turned their AI assistant into a shopping mall.
The company announced “Instant Checkout” , a feature that lets U.S. users buy products directly through ChatGPT conversations, starting with items from Etsy sellers and soon expanding to Shopify merchants including brands like SKIMS and Glossier. Google, predictably, announced their own shopping updates days later because nobody wants to be left holding the analogue shopping bag.
What This Means If You’re Just a Person Trying to Exist
Here’s what’s actually happening, instead of opening Google, scrolling through results, clicking through to Amazon or a website, and then checking out, you can now have a conversation with ChatGPT about what you need, and it’ll show you products you can buy without ever leaving the chat.
“I need a birthday gift for my sister who loves ceramics” becomes a transaction in minutes, not hours of tab-hopping.
It’s frictionless. Seductive. And possibly very expensive for your credit card.
The promise is convenience. The reality is that chatbots are now not just research tools, but actual sources of revenue and sales. Your helpful AI assistant has developed a shopping habit, and it’s shopping for you.
OpenAI insists their “product results are organic and unsponsored, ranked purely on relevance to the user,” and that results aren’t affected merchant fees. Which is the sort of thing companies say right before algorithmic ranking becomes mysteriously profitable. We’ve seen this film before with Google search results.
The pushback has been swift. Critics argue this reflects a growing shift from research ambitions to commercial dominance, with some calling it “infinite slop” (lol love that term) the AI equivalent of turning every surface into an advertisement. Industry observers are raising concerns that OpenAI is positioning itself as a “retail gatekeeper” with outsized influence over which products consumers see and buy. There’s also the small matter that OpenAI was supposed to be, well, open – and instead it’s become quite good at opening wallets.
What This Means If You’re Running a Business (Or Thinking About It)
Right. Deep breath. Here’s what you need to know.
The Technology
OpenAI and Stripe co-developed something called the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) – an open standard that lets AI systems facilitate purchases between buyers and sellers. Open standard means it’s not locked to ChatGPT. Any AI agent, any platform, can theoretically plug into this.
If you’re already using Stripe for payments, you can enable this updating as little as one line of code. If you’re using another payment processor, you can still integrate with Stripe for the agentic commerce bit.
That’s the technical sales pitch. Here’s the translation: the infrastructure for AI-powered shopping is being laid like railway tracks across the internet, and it’s designed to be adopted quickly.
The Money Bit
OpenAI takes a transaction fee from each sale, though they won’t say how much because those details are tucked into confidential contracts. This matters because OpenAI is currently burning through cash whilst scaling up computing infrastructure, so this isn’t a cute experiment – it’s being positioned as “an important new revenue stream”.
What does that mean for you? Another platform taking a cut. Add it to the pile with Etsy fees, Shopify subscriptions, payment processing fees, and whatever else is currently nibbling at your margins.
The Opportunity (Maybe)
Look, I’m not going to tell you this is the second coming of e-commerce or that you’ll be ruined if you don’t jump on board tomorrow. It’s too early for that kind of certainty.
But here’s what’s plausible..
For online sellers already on Etsy or Shopify: You might get discovered people who would never have found you through traditional search. Someone asks ChatGPT for “handmade ceramic bowls with a Japanese aesthetic” and your shop appears. That’s not nothing.
For service businesses: This doesn’t directly affect you yet, but watch carefully. If people start habitually shopping through AI conversations, they’ll start looking for services the same way. “Find me a copywriter in Melbourne who understands tech startups” could become a viable discovery channel.
For brick-and-mortar retailers: If you’ve been putting off getting online, the calculus just shifted. Not because you must sell through ChatGPT, but because the gap between “I wonder if anyone sells X” and “I’ve just bought X” is collapsing to seconds. Your competitors who are online are getting more online. Distance matters less when the buying process is conversational.
For makers and solo operators: The barrier to discovery might be lowering. Might. The problem with marketplaces has always been getting found amongst millions of listings. AI recommendation could be more meritocratic than search engine optimisation games. Or it could be just as rigged. We don’t know yet.
The Risks (Definitely)
Loss of customer relationships: When someone buys through ChatGPT, merchants remain the merchant of record, but they’re discovered through an intermediary. You’re visible, but you’re visible through someone else’s lens. Over time, that shapes which businesses survive.
Algorithmic opacity: ChatGPT considers factors like availability, price, quality, whether a merchant is primary seller, and whether Instant Checkout is enabled. That’s a lot of factors, and they’ll be weighted an algorithm you don’t control. Sound familiar? It should. Google built an empire on this model.
Platform dependency: If a meaningful chunk of your sales starts coming through AI-facilitated purchases, you’re now dependent on that channel staying open, staying affordable, and staying friendly to small businesses. Large platforms have a mixed track record on that last point.
The “good enough” problem: Conversational shopping optimises for convenience over exploration. People might buy the first reasonable option rather than discovering your unique offering. That hurts differentiated small businesses and helps whoever gets recommended first.
What You Should Actually Do
If you’re in Australia (or anywhere outside the U.S. right now): You have time. This isn’t rolling out here immediately. Use that time to:
- Get your house in order digitally. If you’re not selling online, get a basic setup going. If you are, make sure your product descriptions are clear and detailed. AI reads text, which is why good, descriptive copy about what you sell and why it matters will help you get discovered when this arrives.
- Watch what happens in the U.S. Someone will do detailed analysis of which types of businesses benefit and which get buried. Learn from their experience. I will keep my eye on this and do another post when there’s enough info.
- Don’t panic-optimise for this yet. The landscape is too new. Sceptics believe this might be more gimmick than groundbreaking transformation, designed to distract from slower progress in core AI capabilities. They might be right.
If you’re already selling online: Pay attention to the Agentic Commerce Protocol. If you’re on Shopify, you might get access without doing anything. If you’re on your own platform, research whether integration makes sense when it becomes available here.
If you’ve been putting off starting: This doesn’t change the fundamentals. You still need something worth buying, decent photography, clear pricing, and reliable fulfilment. AI shopping won’t fix a mediocre product or terrible customer service. It might, however, help good products get found more easily.
The Bigger AI Assistant Picture
Here’s what I think is actually happening (maybe?), we’re watching the beginning of search unbundling from websites. For twenty years, the path was:
search engine → website → purchase.
That’s fracturing. Now it might be:
conversation with AI → purchase → merchant website (maybe, if you’re curious).
This shifts power. Google built a trillion-dollar company sitting at the top of that funnel. OpenAI wants that position. So does every other AI company.
For small businesses, platform shifts are always risky. You’re not big enough to negotiate terms, and you’re not small enough to be ignored. You’re in the squeezable middle.
The question isn’t whether AI commerce will happen – it’s already happening. The question is whether it creates more opportunities than it closes off, and whether the economics work for anyone besides the platforms.
I don’t have that answer yet. Nobody does.
What I do know is the businesses that survive platform shifts are the ones who stay alert, adapt quickly, and never put all their eggs in one algorithmic basket.
Keep your own customer relationships. Build your own email list. Create products and services distinctive enough that they’re worth seeking out, not just stumbling across.
And maybe, just maybe when AI shopping arrives here, you’ll be ready to use it without being used it.
The Agentic Commerce Protocol is currently available to U.S. retailers. Australian availability hasn’t been announced, but given the open protocol approach and partnerships with global platforms like Shopify, expansion seems likely. Keep an eye on Stripe’s documentation and your e-commerce platform’s announcements for updates.
