Overview
- OpenAI on Tuesday said it is de‑prioritizing ChatGPT’s Instant Checkout and is rolling out visual product comparisons, image‑based search, and faster, more up‑to‑date results to make the bot a better place to research what to buy.
- Shopify the same day enabled Agentic Storefronts and a new Agentic plan so brands can sell inside ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Google’s Gemini using Shopify’s own checkout, which keeps sellers as the merchant of record.
- Gap announced a Gemini partnership that lets customers buy inside the assistant using Google Pay, with Gap supplying product data directly and handling fulfillment, in what CNBC reports is the first such checkout deal from a major fashion retailer.
- Walmart launched an in‑app ChatGPT experience that supports account linking, loyalty, and Walmart payments, while retailers including Target, Sephora, Nordstrom, Best Buy, The Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Wayfair are feeding catalogs for ChatGPT’s discovery features.
- OpenAI’s pullback follows reports of low use and hurdles such as merchant onboarding, inaccurate product details, missing multi‑item carts, and loyalty connections, and it moves focus to open protocols like OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol and Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol that let merchants control checkout and customer data.