US AI startup OpenAI announced the launch of Instant Checkout in ChatGPT on Monday, September 29th, promising to reshape the e-commerce experience and directly challenge Google's search market share.

OpenAI said it will allow US users to shop directly through ChatGPT using the new Instant Checkout feature, powered by an AI-powered payments protocol developed by Stripe.

The new ChatGPT shopping feature is a major step toward helping OpenAI monetize its 700 million weekly users, many of whom currently don't pay to interact with ChatGPT. This move could ultimately steal significant market share from traditional Google search advertising.

The launch of ChatGPT's shopping feature—including the possibility for AI agents to shop on users' behalf—could also potentially disrupt e-commerce, fundamentally changing how businesses design websites and market to consumers.

OpenAI said it will launch Instant Checkout with Etsy sellers but will “soon” begin adding over one million Shopify merchants, including brands like Glossier, Skims, Spanx, and Vuori.

The company also said it is open-sourcing the Agent Commerce Protocol, a payments standard developed in partnership with payment processor Stripe that powers Instant Checkout, so any retailer or business can decide to build a shopping integration with ChatGPT. (Stripe's protocol is based on the open-source Model Context Protocol developed by the AI ​​company Anthropic.)

OpenAI will collect a small fee from merchants on each purchase, which will help boost revenue for the company, which spends billions annually to train and support its AI models.

OpenAI previously launched a shopping feature in ChatGPT that helped users find the best products for them, but the suggested results then linked to the merchant's website, where the user had to complete the purchase—similar to how Google search works. When ChatGPT users ask shopping-related questions like "Best hiking boots for me under $150" or "Possible birthday gifts for my 10-year-old nephew," the chatbot will suggest products.

Under the new system, if a user likes one of the suggestions and has Instant Checkout enabled, they can click the "Buy" button in the chatbot's response and confirm their order, shipping, and payment details without leaving the chat.

OpenAI stated that its "product search results are organic, unsponsored, and ranked purely based on relevance to the user." The company also emphasized that results are not influenced by the fees merchants pay to support Instant Checkout.

The company stated that when displaying results, "ChatGPT considers factors such as availability, price, quality, whether the merchant is a primary seller, and whether Instant Checkout is enabled."

OpenAI said that ChatGPT users who pay a monthly fee for premium features will be able to use the credit or debit card they used to charge their subscription or store other payment methods.

Currently, OpenAI stated that users still have control and must explicitly consent to every step of the purchase process before taking any action. But it's easy to imagine a future where users might be able to authorize ChatGPT or other AI models to act more like agents and make purchases on their behalf based on prompts, without requiring further confirmation from the user.

The fact that users can make purchases without leaving the chat interface could pose a challenge to Alphabet's Google, which derives the majority of its revenue from redirecting users to its website. While Google may introduce similar shopping features within its Gemini chatbot or within "AI Mode" within Google Search, it's unclear whether it would charge fees for transactions completed through these AI-native methods to offset the loss of referral revenue and the opportunity to display additional ads around chatbot queries.