Imagine wanting to buy something online and simply asking your phone to do it. An AI chatbot shows you some options, you ask some clarifying questions, choose one, and then it’s taken care of.

No web search, no applying filters or comparing models on a website, no signing up for accounts or putting in card information. That’s the future suggested by OpenAI’s new shopping features in ChatGPT.

We’re not there yet of course; the new feature merely gives the existing ChatGPT the ability to show you products and link you to where you can buy them. But it’s enough to present a credible threat to the current paradigm of product research via Google, and it could transform how retailers do business online.

In the future, a quick conversation with your phone could let you buy anything.Credit: Pexels

There are already platforms, including Shopify, that online stores use to process sales. If one were to integrate with ChatGPT, or if OpenAI were to develop a system itself, customers could find products and make purchases across any category from the one chat.

If folks are to transition away from standard search engines to AI chat, we’re in the very early stages. Google still gets 26 times more visits than ChatGPT overall, and it dominates the online shopping research and advertising spaces.

But ChatGPT traffic is almost doubling each year, and chatbots in general (including Google’s Gemini) are expanding in a way that could let them........

© Brisbane Times