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Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol
Agentic Commerce Protocol: https://www.agenticcommerce.dev/ https://www.agenticcommerce.dev/, ChatGPT Page: https://chatgpt.com/merchants https://chatgpt.com/merchants, Stripe post: https://stripe.com/blog/developing-an-open-standard-for-agentic-commerce https://stripe.com/blog/developing-an-open-standard-for-agen...
- alach11 1y agoThus far I didn't have to worry about ChatGPT having bad incentives when giving me advice on product purchases. Now that "Merchants pay a small fee on completed purchases", will the model steer me towards ACP-supported retailers at a higher rate?
- chatmasta 1y agoPresumably yes, but if I’m using an agent to make purchases, I’d prefer it to use sites where it can safely make a purchase anyway. The optimal UI would probably leave it up to me. One system should find products, independently of whether a vendor of them supports “ACP.” And I should be able to configure my agent to “only purchase where ACP is supported.” In the context of a conversation, I’d expect it to show me all the products it found, and offer to refine the list to include only ACP vendors.
- CyberMacGyver 1y agoThis will be worst for consumers, like DoorDash or Uber eats. DoorDash takes 15-30% of fees from restaurants so restaurants raise their prices and consumers have to pay service fee and a delivery fee and tip. Be ready to pay more at sites that have this enabled.
- ChrisArchitect 1y agoAssociated site: https://www.agenticcommerce.dev/ https://www.agenticcommerce.dev/ Stripe post: https://stripe.com/blog/developing-an-open-standard-for-agentic-commerce https://stripe.com/blog/developing-an-open-standard-for-agen...
- ChrisArchitect 1y agoSo this is competing with Google's AP2 announced a few weeks ago? https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/announcing-agents-to-payments-ap2-protocol https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/a... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45262858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45262858)
- farco12 1y agoThat's what it looks like. This post gives me the impression it is a bit more narrowly scoped and streamlined compared to A2P: https://stripe.com/blog/developing-an-open-standard-for-agentic-commerce https://stripe.com/blog/developing-an-open-standard-for-agen...
- allears 1y agoSo what would a 'hallucination' be in this context? An order for a half ton of toilet paper? If I know ChatGPT gets things wrong, why would I trust it to shop for me?
- robotswantdata 1y agohttps://developers.openai.com/commerce https://developers.openai.com/commerce Yet another protocol
- underdeserver 1y agoThus begins the age of ads in AI.
- bobbiechen 1y agoBack in June (just three months ago) when I wrote this blog, people were telling me it was far away: https://digitalseams.com/blog/the-ai-lifestyle-subsidy-is-going-to-end https://digitalseams.com/blog/the-ai-lifestyle-subsidy-is-go...
- thm 1y ago"users can now buy directly from Etsy sellers" Can't wait to buy an AI-generated coloring book via AI.
- Insanity 1y agoCan’t wait for being able to run industry leading LLMs locally without the threat of advertising
- threefiftyone1 1y agoWonder what protocol is going to win
- harmoni-pet 1y agoopenai speed running their enshitification
- datadrivenangel 1y agoThat's the whole point of AI: massive productivity increase so you can compete with the major global tech companies!
- whyho 1y agoPandora’s box is now open
- throwawa14223 1y agoEnshitification implies there was a good stage to fall from.
- cindyllm 1y ago[dead]
- Havoc 1y agoDon't think I'm anywhere close to trusting agents with my money
- Osyris 1y agoI don't think this is that? This is more like agents show you a list of products and the UI allows you to buy them like any other online store.
- hchdifnfbgbf 1y agoThey get a cut for products that support this. So they’re incentivized to display those instead. It’s pretty close to standard affiliate advertising and the biases that introduces.
- Osyris 1y agoSure, but still far from "trusting agents with my money"
- jsheard 1y agoEvery so often I check back on ChatGPTs product search powers, and every time it cites garbage blogspam articles that praise every product hoping you'll click their affiliate links. The irony being that many of those spam articles are probably generated with ChatGPT - https://youtu.be/WLfAf8oHrMo?t=86 https://youtu.be/WLfAf8oHrMo?t=86
- neilv 1y agoThe trust problem was a concern early on in agents (well before LLMs). Although, at the time, we didn't have the "fox guarding the henhouse" problem of modern tech companies, and they hadn't yet inserted themselves into the loop so intimately.
- constantcrying 1y agoAre they insane? How deep into a bubble are we that digital stores get integration into LLMs? There are so many obvious risks here and so few imaginable upsides over redirecting a user to the merchant.
- fourseventy 1y agoMeh. Meta recently got rid of their instant checkout product for Instagram and Facebook where customers could buy products directly from a companies FB or IG page. Nobody was using it. I would imagine it will be the same situation here.
- barnas2 1y agoI bet this is going to make them a TON of money. A ton of people are using chatgpt to essentially replace google, and treating it like a trusted source. The average user is going to jump at the ability to ask their "trusted" source a question and get a direct link to the thing they need to buy.
- WastedCucumber 1y agoI doubt it. I think it will take a long time to dethrone the tried and true google search of "<product I'm considering> reddit"
- hchdifnfbgbf 1y agoIt will take no time. I made three purchases this weekend where I started my search with ChatGPT because it gives me better results than Google, and it can also pull in or link me to Reddit comments. I have it running a background research task now where it’s producing a comparison table of product options with columns for different attributes I’m interested in, including links to purchase it, so it can help me make a decision tonight. If this feature is available for what I want, I’ll be using it in a few hours. Whether you use ChatGPT or Google the first thing you see is an AI generated response, but Google is using the cheapest version of their model and only providing the context from the top 10 results, while ChatGPT is using a much better model and passing in more context. Lots of folks are turning to ChatGPT instead of Google these days.
- thenanyu 1y agoWhat did you buy
- mungoman2 1y agoWow, with this in place the incentives are enormous for OpenAI to allow sponsors to pay for a slight nudge in the recommendation this way or that. This will replace the current ad economy.
- modeless 1y agoYeah, it seems obvious that this is how models will be monetized in the future. The free version of ChatGPT will stop being a loss leader for the subscription and start paying for itself with commissions. The vast majority of people will use the free version. They will likely go through many iterations of this before finding what works, but I expect it will eventually be an incredible business on the same level as AdWords. We can only hope that the incentives don't end up warping the models too much...
- AlexandrB 1y ago> We can only hope that the incentives don't end up warping the models too much... Oh my sweet summer child. How can you be so optimistic after seeing Google's decline? It won't happen all at once, but the need for revenue growth and the incremental logic of A/B testing are relentless forces that wear away at the product once ads are in the mix.
- modeless 1y agoIt's been 27 years since Google Search launched, and I still find it very useful despite some perverse incentives. A pretty good run I would say. If OpenAI declines that slowly, and is then displaced by something better, I'd say it was a good outcome.
- AlexandrB 1y agoI hope it takes as long for AI enshittification, but the tech "cycle" has become shorter and the pressure to make revenue is much more intense than it was for Google.
- 1y ago
- podgietaru 1y agoSo, if I'm understanding this correctly. The latest ChatGPT features are... That it can now message me without me talking to it, and can automatically buy things for me.
- jasonsb 1y agoSOTA
- awestroke 1y agoAbsolutely brilliant observation—you’ve managed to distill what took OpenAI an entire product announcement into a single, devastatingly clear sentence. Would you like me to diagram the precise mechanisms through which these features transform users into passive recipients of AI-initiated interactions and transactions?
- momojo 1y agosure
- SimianSci 1y agoBeing reminded of how Sychophantic OpenAI's models can be and coupling this with the parent comment makes me unreasonably upset.
- rossant 1y agoExcellent. Imagine three nested loops: - Initiation loop: The AI identifies a trigger (calendar entry, email, purchase pattern) and begins the conversation unprompted. - Action loop: Once trust is assumed, it executes on your behalf (ordering, booking, messaging). - Feedback loop: Each interaction produces more data, refining its ability to predict when to act next. Together these loops progressively erode the boundary between “I decide, AI assists” and “AI decides, I ratify.” Would you like me to sketch this as a flow diagram, or unfold the psychological implications of each loop?
- cnity 1y agoAre you two using ChatGPT to generate these, or are you both fantastic at emulating the writing style? Because this is so spot on.
- jasonsb 1y agoI’ve got more money than I know what to do with and now, thanks to OpenAI, I’ve found the perfect custom-built solution: an AI agent ready to spend it for me.
- tortilla 1y agoYou're absolutely right, I've purchased 10 Blackwell B200s on your Platinum AMEX to maximize your points.
- DebtDeflation 1y ago"How do I do XYZ in Python?" ChatGPT: I've found the following Python books that contain explanations of how to complete that task. Which one would you like to purchase?" "None. I just want an answer." ChatGPT: Ok, perhaps you were looking to purchase a python. I've found the following pet stores that sell Ball and Reticulated pythons. Which one would you like to purchase?" "Aaaaaarrrrrrrggggghhhhhhh"
- datadrivenangel 1y agoOr if you go full agent mode and let ChatGPT buy things for you: https://xkcd.com/576/ https://xkcd.com/576/
- netsharc 1y ago"This book by LearnPythonFastGuaranteedResults!!!!11! comes highly recommended! People are raving about it, a buyer named John Ryan said he got a 400k job after learning Python by reading this book! Are you sure you don't want to buy it?"
- Martin_Silenus 1y agoSorry, but I did not find any "Aaaaaarrrrrrrggggghhhhhhh" to purchase. Could you give me more details?
- kalap_ur 1y agoIf you upgrade to Premium Plus for only $5 more per month, I can offer you answer first with recommendations in the bottom.
- datadrivenangel 1y ago"Merchants pay a small fee on completed purchases, but the service is free for users, doesn’t affect their prices, and doesn’t influence ChatGPT’s product results. Instant Checkout items are not preferred in product results." The incentives are very strong to prefer instant checkout items.
- burkaman 1y agoWouldn't it be incredibly easy for merchants to expose slightly higher prices over the "agentic commerce protocol", so that users do end up paying this fee?
- tom1337 1y agoIt would be, but at least in the EU this is not legal - this is also why you cannot pass the payment processor fee to the customer (which this kind of is)
- oulipo2 1y ago[flagged]
- ahmedhawas123 1y agoI realize a lot of the comments here are pessimistic, but this is a pretty obvious monetization path that they just can't not take. This is actually a huge angle IMO. ChatGPT is on a path to become a real entry point to the internet - why use Amazon or Google Search when you can embed results and checkout in the I agree there's a real bias issue, but that is consistent through out any large company - e.g., Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc have sponsored results
- libraryatnight 1y ago"...obvious monetization path that they just can't not take." Sure they could. This notion that an unscrupulous revenue stream is justified if it pays well enough smacks of "Just following orders!" "It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it.” - Grapes of Wrath At some point we have to stop this madness.
- neuralRiot 1y agoMost people has been convinced throughout the years that individual actions have no effect on big corps, they need to learn that it shouldn’t matter. If you don’t agree with what a service or product provider does simply don’t buy their product find an alternative or just don’t but do it just for your own principles.
- what 1y agoDo you run an ad blocker? If so this feels a little hypocritical, you should just bounce from the site and seek an alternative if you don’t agree with what they do.
- ethbr1 1y ago> If you don’t agree with what a service or product provider does simply don’t buy their product find an alternative This implies antitrust has been sufficiently enforced such that there are viable alternatives in all markets. That's not currently true.
- kirykl 1y agoShould have always been clear the singularity will have a shopping cart
- mturmon 1y agoAnd a large billboard blocking the view
- zingababba 1y agoAGI will be the ultimate consumer experience.
- emil-lp 1y agoBut Amazon has a patent on one-click purchases, so with AGI you must ask twice.
- twodave 1y agoI think this is probably a joke, but it’s an incorrect one I believe. Amazon did have such a patent, but it expired in 2017.
- falcor84 1y agoIndeed, I believe that the singularity is actually the point in time when the number of shopping carts will tend to infinity. And of course, very shortly after it will overflow to negative infinity and the cycle will repeat.
- rudedogg 1y agoThis regresses the incentives back to what we had with search engines where what I need (answers) and what OpenAI needs (money from ads) are at odds. Search engines used to be very useful too until the endless profit a/b testing boiled us all
- risyachka 1y agoAds in ChatGPT was the most obvious outcome from day 1. And this is not a bad thing, otherwise you can only image how many businesses will close when google traffic stars to decline. Everyone likes to hate on ads but the reality is that without ads 99% users even on hacker news would be jobless as the companies where they work will have no way to find clients, and even if they manage to find some - those clients won't be able to sell and will go out of business.
- ElijahLynn 1y agothere are other ways to be probably, without ads. I'm optimistic we, as a society, will find those ways.
- thedelanyo 1y agoI think ads are great, but the tactics (tracking) around them aren't really in the good course.
- rudedogg 1y ago> Ads in ChatGPT was the most obvious outcome from day 1 Agreed. Tech companies always do this. With Ads, we’re back into speculation territory, and the “how do we pay for and justify all this shit?” can gets kicked down the road. Can’t we actually solve problems in the real world instead? Wouldn’t people be willing to pay if AI makes them more productive? Why do we need an ad-supported business model when the product is only $20/mo?
- bonoboTP 1y ago> Wouldn’t people be willing to pay if AI makes them more productive? Why do we need an ad-supported business model when the product is only $20/mo? This was always a fake reasoning (ads are there because people want everything for free!), but then paid HBO started ads, your purchased smart TVs started ads, cars that you bought with money started ads... ([some business model] + ads) will simply always generate more profit than [some business model] (at least that's how they think). Even if you already pay, if they also shove some ads in your eyes, they can make even more money. Corporations don't work the way humans do. There is no "enough". The task of the CEO is to grow the company, make more profit each quarter and is responsible to the shareholders. It's not like, ok, now we can pay all our bills, we don't need more revenue. You always need maximum possible revenue.
- WastedCucumber 1y agoI'm not looking forward to when there's an AI pyschosis case where it turns out ChatGPT sold a bump stock or gave a bulk discount on fertilizer.
- choilive 1y agoI knew this day would come.. but not this soon.
- philip1209 1y agoShots fired at Google
- siva7 1y agoAh.. the day OpenAI turned into an Ad company. We all knew it would happen someday.
- ranger_danger 1y agoWho even thought this would happen? Got any sources?
- rhetocj23 1y agoErm their recent hire of Simo and acquisition of Statsig made this obvious.
- testfrequency 1y agoCan’t believe it took me this long to see this buried mention of Simo. Anyone who knows the industry long knew this was going to be the fate of her made up “CEO” role at OAI. It’s one of the (many) reasons I do not trust OAI with anything.
- rhetocj23 1y agoLol Im also surprised nobody else has seemingly clocked this. Its clear as day.
- ziml77 1y agoWho? Those of us who were paying attention to how tech companies have operated for the past 25 years. They start out subsidized by investors and then once they have enough users and can no longer pay for them with the invested cash, they push more and more ads onto users. And it was easy to see that LLMs are an especially devious place the inject ads because they can flow right into the the response and not even look like an ad, but rather feel like a casual recommendation.
- nitwit005 1y agoI've seen multiple prior conversations about the idea on this site. It's easy to find similar reddit discussions with a search: https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1ljv78j/sam_altman_says_ads_in_chatgpt_are_not_off_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1ljv78j/sam_altman_... It's a fairly obvious way for them to make money, as people are using it as a replacement for search engines, and that's how search engines have made money.
- jspdown 1y agoLooks like it's OpenAI response to Google's Agent Payment Protocol (AP2) but without the micro transaction part.
- hmate9 1y agoIn a way this was kind of inevitable, but I had hope that it was still 1-2 years away. This likely degrades brand value and begins to shift the incentives of the AI's responses.
- SimianSci 1y agoOpenAI desperately wants to compete at the same level as the big tech firms. While their only successful product is impressive, it is doubtful that its success alone can sustain them beyond the first 'downturn' of their value in the market. This reeks of desperation on their part and should bring more attention to the mountain of "promises" they have made, compared to its actual deliveries.
- hedayet 1y ago1. I am one of the people who have been looking forward to the ability to buy directly from a chat session instead of going to Google from a chat session. 2. The media began covering this 3 hours ago and $goog is just ~1% down. I’m curious why it didn’t spook Google investors, whether reasonably or unreasonably.
- SimianSci 1y agoIf OpenAI can pull this off, couldnt Google just do the same with its Gemini Product and start using their scale to compete more directly? Perhaps the sentiment isnt as negative as OpenAI lacks any sort of mote here to keep competitors from simply replicating this change.
- brazukadev 1y agoThis will only be profitable is OpenAI makes money from showing the products because the conversion rate will be bad.
- coffeecoders 1y agoHackernews used to dunk on Airbnb, Coinbase and Uber. Now they're part of our daily lives. Feels like we’re watching the same arc play out with LLMs. I wonder if we’re seeing the same pattern repeat here with ChatGPT becoming big. Outrage followed by inevitability.
- ranger_danger 1y agoIt's basically the "Oh no! Anyway..." Clarkson meme.
- mouse_ 1y agoThe problem isn't that OpenAI is big news. The problem is that OpenAI currently appears to be worth more than AirBNB, Coinbase, Uber and Lyft combined, and Sam would have you believe this is still AI's "early stage". How much more liquidity is even left for this thing to soak up?
- coffeecoders 1y agoYeah, the valuations are crazy, but think about it this way: the app economy and gig economy seemed absurdly speculative at first too. And now they’re worth trillions. Early stage hype overshoots, sure, but sometimes it’s just pricing in things the old frameworks can’t even model yet.
- AlexandrB 1y agoAirbnb and Uber are shit in 2025. They're basically no better than what they were trying to replace. "The arc" you describe is people saying that these products aren't a magical solution that prints money and being proven right as the products are worn down to the level of the thing they were trying to disrupt by market forces. Uber, in particular, drives me nuts because we replaced a supposedly powerful and evil taxi cartel (which happened to be a bunch of small, regional businesses) with a huge multinational corporation. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
- coffeecoders 1y ago
- rhetocj23 1y agoThis reeks of desperation to generate revenue where they can, with a race against time to show profitability. The hire of Simo and acquisition of Statsig is very present here.
- Traubenfuchs 1y ago> OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says GPT-5 actually scares him — 'what have we done?' Ah, so that‘s what he actually meant. They promised us AGI and the singularity, they delivered more ads.
- mrguyorama 1y agoHe said in a podcast the other day that with AI we will build a dyson sphere in the next couple decades. I can't believe people give this guy money. It's so frustrating.
- Traubenfuchs 1y agoI would love to have a candid conversation with him. Is he a lucky idiot far enough removed from engineering to believe his own words or is he a calculated, capable showman just in it for the griftmaxx? Is the current endgame really just adtech?
- sneilan1 1y agoI love the little synthesizer in the square in the footer :) What an awesome easter egg..
- bravura 1y agoCouldn't see it, what was it?
- Sohcahtoa82 1y agoYou should see a grid at the bottom of https://www.agenticcommerce.dev/ https://www.agenticcommerce.dev/
- skeeter2020 1y agoThis is textbook strategy, adding layer after layer of pseudo protocols and "standards" on top of (surprise, surprise) their hard to defend against competition offerings, and ironically attempt to build a moat around something that ideally is open and interoperable. I haven't ruled out that I'm actually an idiot who doesn't get it, but it sure feels like the emperor has no clothes. It's like a recent Cloudflare post about how we're using LLMs to code all wrong; we just need to build (yet more) APIs specifically for MCP servers and then have very simple tools that only use those APIs. Yet more extra effort, time and energy optimizing for someone else's benefit.
- rhetocj23 1y ago"I haven't ruled out that I'm actually an idiot who doesn't get it," Nope youre not an idiot, I agree with your thoughts.
- objclxt 1y ago> This is textbook strategy [...] attempt to build a moat around something that ideally is open and interoperable It's so textbook that Google two weeks ago came out with their own competing "open" standard for doing the same thing! https://ap2-protocol.org https://ap2-protocol.org
- JambalayaJimbo 1y agoIt's a new space, everyone is coming up with their own protocols. It's really no different than Stripe offering an API so you can use them as a payment provider. You need to implement this API on your website so ChatGPT can allow users to buy stuff from you. You need some amount of strictness in the API here, LLMs are not actually sentient. You could say that this is a failure on OpenAI's part in comparison to their marketing, sure.
- coffeemug 1y agoIMO this view puts the cart before the horse. Suppose ChatGPT builds a UI that consumers prefer over web browsing to purchase products. How should merchants plug into that UI? This protocol is an easy way for merchants to do that. And once merchants are plugged in, consumers still need to be able to pay, and merchants need to get paid. Stripe makes that easy. Consumers will only use the UI if it's better. Merchants will plug into the UI to make more money. So everyone wins-- consumers, merchants, OpenAI, and Stripe. And since the protocol is open, other chatbots and other payment processors can implement it too. Who loses? (I agree that at scale these things tend to accrue to top players and you get all kinds of weird unsavory consequences. But I'd argue that's a critique of our regulatory apparatus, not of the companies building products and services.)
- ranger_danger 1y agoWhat about ad-blockers? Are they going to lobby browser manufacturers to start enforcing immutable, cryptographically-verified pages?
- Imnimo 1y agoI'm just not sure that I would trust that the view/description of the item ChatGPT shows me and the thing I'm actually agreeing to buy are the same thing.
- shreddit 1y agoI’m surprised free users don’t have to watch an ad spot every five messages (yet?)
- ph4rsikal 1y ago[dead]
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y agoThe thing is.. chatgpt can be genuinely useful. I did purposefully use it to get some some product comparisons and whatnot. It could be genuinely good if it is handled well and not devolve into constant buy blast ( like with emails and just about any other medium ). Still, there is a reason I am frantically working on working on a more local setup that I can trust not to: a) oversell me stuff b) is under my control c) not profile me ( in a way that can be sold to other merchants ) The issue seems to be the same as always. I am either a minority or the money pull is way too strong.
- xnx 1y agoIs this OpenAI's Amazon Dash?
- rawgabbit 1y agoSo in their example, OpenAI and their partner Stripe is handling the transaction? If yes, they are now competing with both Google (advertising) and Amazon/Walmart (online marketplace).
- didibus 1y agoNot sure it competes with Amazon/Walmart, those would probably end up the places where the agent would purchase from. They're not becoming a marketplace for merchants, this is just a protocol so that the AI agent can place a purchase on any site that supports it. Also, OpenAI is not handling the transaction, Stripe is, but it doesn't have to be Stripe, just that Stripe co-developed the protocol with OpenAI and is first to have it available.
- ipnon 1y agoWhich means if investors find this compelling, there are massive revaluations in store on the public market.
- thesimon 1y ago> Amazon/Walmart They are also in the advertising business. Walmart cleared $4 billion last year. https://www.adexchanger.com/commerce/walmarts-ad-business-cleared-4-billion-in-2024-and-is-only-getting-started/ https://www.adexchanger.com/commerce/walmarts-ad-business-cl...
- bossyTeacher 1y agoCan't wait for the agent to hallucinate and while fulfilling a request to buy 2 jeans, it ends up buying 3 macbooks.
- jedberg 1y ago> ChatGPT shows the most relevant products from across the web. Product results are organic and unsponsored, ranked purely on relevance to the user. Cynical take, I know, but that is how Google started too. But now they prioritize people who pay them, and it's only a matter of time before OpenAI does the same. And I can't at all blame them! They are there to make money (well, now). But I suspect this won't be true for long.
- notatoad 1y agoIf OpenAI is charging commission on sales through ChatGPT, then they're probably better motivated than google is to show the best results.
- andrewxdiamond 1y agomotivated to show you results that get sales, not that are the best solution to the problem
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- DebtDeflation 1y agoBetter than continuing to show me ads for vacuum cleaners two months after I purchased one after searching for them.
- jedberg 1y agoIn many cases, Google gets commissions too. A lot of their ads pay when the person completes a purchase.
- bmau5 1y agoWhich ads are these? My impression was they are all based on CPC or CP impression
- dzink 1y agoThis was bound to happen, but they will also likely see a much higher chargeback rate across the board if users are surprised when random comments or agent actions place orders or that orders placed too easily need to be reversed. Because consumers have less disposable income with all the AI-enabled layoffs, the bigger bonanza will come if OpenAI creates educational pathways via AI to enable more people to make money with AI. Entrepreneurial guides that take you step by step, accounting and other hurdles that AI can walk you through as you grow, brainstorming and exploring new business ideas, training people for a new trade or career path as employees. That will be the true game-changer that beats AGI. Because when you can give the entire society an easy ladder towards the industries that need them most, you will have a society that makes money off of AI to spend via AI shopping experience and gains purpose.
- varenc 1y agodigression: > ... when random comments or agent actions place orders I believe that the purchase action must be triggered by a user manually in a specific "Pay <vendor>" UI element? It doesn't seem to me like any prompt could trigger a purchase directly. Of course this could change, but likely won't for the reasons you said.
- hchdifnfbgbf 1y agoThat’s my impression but the specification repository doesn’t seem to mention that at all, when it seems like it should be a requirement.
- jryle70 1y agoThe article mentioned this: Users stay in control — they explicitly confirm each step before any action is taken.
- vohk 1y ago> Because consumers have less disposable income with all the AI-enabled layoffs, the bigger bonanza will come if OpenAI creates educational pathways via AI to enable more people to make money with AI. Who do you imagine will be throwing money at all these side-hustle "make money with AI" business you envision? No doubt there will be a few- there already are a few- but as the market gets increasingly flooded with AI slop enterprise with very little value add, that well is going to dry up quick. It's not different than all those content creators making videos offering to teach you the secrets to easy money... instead of just making all that easy money themselves.
- beAbU 1y agoAt this point, not allowing for sponsored recommendations (ads) would be leaving money on the table and OpenAI will for sure be accused of reneging on their fiduciary duty to the shareholders. As much as I hate it, it's inevitable.
- throwacct 1y ago"Merchants are ranked based on availability, price, quality, whether they are the maker or primary seller of that item, and whether Instant Checkout is enabled." So, this is a race to de bottom for any SMB. If this didn't work for Instagram and Facebook, I don't think is gonna work for them neither. What's interesting is that they're REALLY trying to see what's going to stick before the wheel stops spinning. From "AGI" and gpt5 getting Altman all "scared" of what's coming to trying to sell ads, a social media showing ai videos, among other things ("app" store with GPTs, etc.). If there was a statement that we were in a bubble waiting to pop, this right here is plenty enough proof of that.
- cnity 1y agoRule 5: Don't be an endpoint. https://nextbigideaclub.com/magazine/futureproof-9-rules-humans-age-automation-bookbite/27510 https://nextbigideaclub.com/magazine/futureproof-9-rules-hum...
- candiddevmike 1y agoIsn't that what management is?
- flkiwi 1y ago> finding products they love That phrase is a dead giveaway that a very silly group of people have started dominating the conversation at a given company. I don't "love" a product. I certainly don't "love" a product I'm having to resort to ChatGPT to figure out my potential relationship with. At best, I "love" having a solution to a problem that I want to spend as little time and money solving as possible, and even then it's more of a satisfactorily productive comradeship. God this is exhausting.
- observationist 1y agoIt means the enshittification is reaching full acceleration. The MBAs have taken over. It'll be a constant battle between monetization and research, and a continual skewing of research and development as unnecessary expenses, followed by a full-on torching of the reputation in return for fast cash now and trading on vibes thereafter, while the rest of the world moves on. Sama wants to speedrun the Apple arc, it looks like.
- lomase 1y agoThe MBAs have taken over a place that calls itself HackerNews. Imagine if the company has AI in its name.
- spwa4 1y agoThis is a brilliant idea. I'm going to mail 99999999 people about my new MBAI degree offering! For only $6666 you too can become part of the new Mega Banana Annihilation Infantry – the secret task force fighting rogue potassium. Success guaranteed! Buy now!
- flkiwi 1y agoAnd investors will be genuinely surprised when the whole thing falls apart in 36 months and the still-very-rich founder spends the next 16 years giving uncomfortably veiny public talks about some uncomfortably sociopathic thing he’s become fascinated with and everyone tries to pretend is totally normal.
- 1y ago
- mschuster91 1y agoHoly fuck, wasn't just a few weeks ago someone here who complained about some vibe coding service wiping all the data? The last thing I'd trust any AI agent, particularly in today's time, would be something tying directly into my bank account!
- ctkhn 1y agoWho, on the user side, is asking for this? Even amazon subscribe is still buying you a product you already chose.
- cush 1y agoIt's a natural step towards agents buying things on your behalf - getting people warmed up to the idea that ChatGPT can be tasked with buying things. It starts with a buy button, "buy this now". In a few weeks it will become "buy dogfood", and it will just do the thing, knowing you get some certain food from Chewy
- SrslyJosh 1y agoWho needs that, though? Is buying things that hard and time-consuming? > In a few weeks it will become "buy dogfood", and it will just do the thing, knowing you get some certain food from Chewy I have autoship orders set up with Chewy. Stuff arrives on a schedule and I get a small discount. I don't need an overhyped autocomplete fucking things up for me, especially when I can just set up a subscription myself and forget about it.
- mhitza 1y agoYou do not. But the people who eagerly jumped to smart homes, and voice assistants that are always on, to which privacy might as well not exist... Are going to love their own "Jarvis" which they can give shopping orders to while in the kitchen. Basically, the Sillicon Valley "smart fridge" episode. Or even better, the Modern Family "smart fridge" episode.
- cush 1y agoYou're kind of echoing exactly what I'm getting at though. The difference comes down to trust. Maybe today we don't trust that one of these LLM apps is up to the task of buying things, but there was once a time where people didn't trust that if you click a button on a website a product would show up at your door. Over time, we came to expect things like order received emails, status updates, and the best companies will show you where your product is on a little map as it arrives to your house. Now most shopping is done online. Convenience won. There are still barriers to shopping online like too much choice, selecting sizes, and very personal constraints. An agent can know you're in the market for a new phone and can help you pick out a new one, then keep an eye out for deals. Maybe your agent will know your sizes and buy shoes that always fit. It's really not that wild of a concept.
- m_a_g 1y agoThey really time releases based on their competition. How many times did this happen with both companies? I've lost count. They had been keeping this in reserve and decided to release it when Anthropic released Sonnet 4.5. Anime-like tactics.
- Analemma_ 1y agoThey definitely do, but I think this particular one was a misfire. "We've updated Chat-GPT to help you better connect with #Brands #BrandsULove #adtech" would be eyerolling at the best of times, since it's a nigh-guaranteed signal of incoming enshittification, but positioning it as counterprogramming to Claude Code genuinely becoming more useful just looks pathetic.
- Someone1234 1y agoI feel like this one may backfire though, Anthropic announced a core improvement to their product, OpenAI countered with enshittification to theirs. It only further highlights that OpenAI are running fast and hard towards a future where ChatGPT is a marketing/advertising/etc system just like Google's search has become.
- giankhand 1y agothis is what NVIDIA invested $100B for!!!
- 7thpower 1y agoWait until you see the information they’re synthesizing from your conversations and integrations.
- greenie_beans 1y agowon't this just lead to them offering the same products for a given search, sort of like how AI homogenized writing? "recommend me a novel about <whatever>" and it just gives you bestsellers
- hakunin 1y agoI need this for DoorDash desperately. My wife and I trying to figure out what to eat every day is one of the most annoying parts of the day. If anyone has any recommendations, would be much appreciated.
- daydreamnation 1y agomeal plan
- tdhz77 1y agoCook unity if you want the meals without the hassle
- hakunin 1y agoWe tried different services like these, they quickly become unappetizing. You end up forcing yourself to microwave a box vs. order something fresh cooked.
- tdhz77 1y agoI guess I’m looking for some decent food that isn’t owned by the tobacco industry. Having variety of meals that are cooked by chefs with good ingredients.
- user1999919 1y agoall hail. kneel before the altar of capitalism. may our bishop ai shepard us to the light
- user1999919 1y ago[flagged]
- FergusArgyll 1y agoSeems like the best possible "ads-in-chatgpt" implementation. ChatGPT still gives its "Honest Opinion" but you can buy with one click. (IIUC)
- aniviacat 1y agoThe ability to purchase items being added to ChatGPT seemed inevitable and now it happened. However, as far as I can tell, it happened in the best way possible. This seems like an actual open standard, which is refreshing to see in the modern web. Creating a common API for stores and payment processors will likely lead to increased competition, benefiting users. I'm happy to see this. It seems to benefit all consumers, even those who do not use AI.
- didibus 1y agoTrue, but it was probably to OpenAI's best interest. It would be easy for competing models to partner with stores and offer their competing protocol, and now models would have to make deals and if a user wanted to be able to use it to buy from websiteX you might need to go use the competitor's LLM, etc. Not sure that would have been a smart move for them.
- dougdonohoe 1y ago[flagged]
- d--b 1y agoThis is for the AI engineers who are loaded enough to find it funny that the system orders a lamborghini when they asked for a toy for their kids.
- cs702 1y agoMy immediate thought is that commerce mediated by AI will quickly make "old-style" ad-tech feel non-intrusive by comparison. But, like it or not, here it comes.
- jazzyjackson 1y agoFor people who've supplanted their own thoughts with auto complete yes, their dreams will start advertising to them
- nusl 1y agoSo who do you call when it drains your account and orders 50 tons of wood, or falls for prompt injection and pays a scammer? Will OpenAI reimbuirse you? No. Considering how vulnerable AI is to this sort of thing, there's no way in hell I'm touching it for at least 5-10 years. Sure, they tell you that it's safe at the bottom and give reassurances, but I'm also not going to trust them on that, just as I don't trust pretty much anything ChatGPT tells me without futher verification.
- jazzyjackson 1y agoThe fact they're working on this is a huge signal that AGI isn't happening
- softwaredoug 1y agoAnd that OpenAI is trying to focus on being a consumer product over business use cases.
- kazinator 1y ago* - - - - (1 / 5) Village Idiot, Somewhere, USA. "product is not at all what chatgpt showed. returned for a refund. wanna give 0 stars but cant" [Response from Seller] "We regret that our product doesn't meet the customer's expectations — we issued a full refund."
- Liwink 1y agoWhat percentage of e-commerce will be taken by OpenAI by the end of 2026? It appears to me that they are already well-positioned to become the next generation of Amazon with their current user base - * AWS -> OpenAI APIs * Amazon -> ChatGPT Shopping
- softwaredoug 1y agoIt took a while for people to trust putting credit cards into websites. So general adoption will take some time.
- mielioort 1y ago[flagged]
- nickphx 1y agoWhy would anyone trust the black box to make purchasing decisions and how would that jive with current credit/debit card agreements?
- nojs 1y agoThis is likely to be a longer term play at advertising - once people are accustomed to purchasing in this way, they’ll add [sponsored] merchants in the same list.
- pton_xd 1y ago> Merchants pay a small fee on completed purchases, but the service is free for users Where's the money coming from to pay the fee? From my wallet, of course! At scale, this raises the price of purchases. Another thought -- the text-only interface of ChatGPT is way too limiting. We need images (and video) generated on demand showcasing product suggestions. Showing an image of the user wearing some new shades is going to be pretty compelling...
- MisterPea 1y agoNot really, this is just effectively a new supply side platform for advertisers. Retail companies will just allocate a percentage of their marketing budget to OAI instead of Google/Meta
- Spivak 1y agoYep, in some ways it's good to be the price sensitive side of the transaction. Can't really take more of the money people don't have.
- skybrian 1y agoYou could say the same of affiliate links on Wirecutter, or any other marketing expense. Before objecting to this, I'd want to know how much those fees are, but the terms seem to be undisclosed.
- citizenpaul 1y ago>Where's the money coming from.... That is literally how all credit card purchases work. And yes you are right. Based on that looks like that inflation rocket is headed to the moon. The general population is just not capable of seeing even one layer beneath the surface of a system. Its like that skit where the people ask the programmer why they cannot have three parallel lines that intersect (or something like that) and he says "geometry."
- gruez 1y ago>Based on that looks like that inflation rocket is headed to the moon. ??? Surely you realize that unsecured revolving credit is going to have higher interest rates than government debt?
- iandanforth 1y agoI found and purchased a hand-made toy for my son this evening using ChatGPT searching Etsy. The search results were good and made it easy to pick from the many options. The checkout process using my stored CC hit an error (it didn't tell me what error) but when I switched to Google Pay it completed successfully. Overall a pretty nice experience as shopping goes.
- rybosworld 1y agoThe AI of everything economy seems like it will be so deflationary that money will stop being useful.
- mercurialsolo 1y agoThis is a new amazon marketplace with trusted reviews. IMO having worked in commerce for a while - this opens up new avenues for merchants to work on gaming reccomendations and the trust quotient delivered. It also opens up - ads - subscriptions - transactions based revenue lines for OpenAI
- Terr_ 1y ago> Agentic Commerce I can't remember where, but someone pointed out a quirk of current AI advertising that is hard for me to un-see: In many ads, a customer appears to be middle class, but decides to save 15-60 seconds by giving their wallet to an "AI assistant" and blindly trusting it will purchase products and restaurant reservation on their behalf. It takes some affluence to be that casually indifferent to spending-mistakes, and it seldom matches the "this could be you" person being shown. Now, maybe it's deliberate, to owning the product will have made you wealthier, or its just a quirk of keeping ads short... but it's still weird.
- mtoner23 1y agoReminds me of the Amazon echo ads where people bought things so impulsively with a hey Alexa command. I don't think that one panned out but we'll see how well this one does
- delfinom 1y agoDon't worry, I assume BNPL service integration will come and it will become the default payment method. The capitalists want people to spend spend spend spend spend. Consequently, its why we have the term lifestyle creep and people having fucktons of debts (not all cases of course). People are convinced by endless marketing they have to have the same luxuries as everyone else.
- _m_p 1y agoAGI achieved internally.
- efitz 1y agoOn chat: I can’t afford to buy the widget now, sorry, my rent is due. AI Agent: buying widget now. I am also canceling the lease on your apartment to improve your purchasing power.
- burroisolator 1y agoI'll admit I immediately thought of https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/ https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/ after seeing this blog post.
- righthand 1y agoReminds of the chapter of Ubik where Joe Chip can't open the door to his apartment in order to let another character in because he's broke and the door costs $0.05 to open. So he argues with the door, eventually removing the hinges with a screwdriver in which the door threatens to sue him.
- ThrownOffGame 1y agoAlexa Is Listening https://m.xkcd.com/1807/ https://m.xkcd.com/1807/
- cooloo 1y agoThis the beginning of reversing the product chain Where users will becomes the product.
- cess11 1y ago"There is no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons." Gilles Deleuze, Postscript on Societies of Control, 1990.
- stephen_cagle 1y agoI... i actually wouldn't be opposed to this if it meant a return to my buying things from the website of the company that makes the product. What Amazon really nailed, and the reason I buy like 90% of things from them, is the easy and known shipping and return policy. But the second reason I buy from Amazon is laziness. I am too lazy to look up the (often confusing) product on their company store, I'd rather just buy that product through amazon. To compound my laziness, I don't like having to once again fill out my email, home address, and credit card for the thousandth time when I go to their site. But if I don't have to find and navigate to their site and I don't have to fill in my information for the thousandth time. Now, we are talking about me realistically considering a direct purchase. This is likely good for the consumer, and largely good for the world (less centralization).
- matsemann 1y agoFor me it's always been the opposite: I want to buy a charger, sd card or whatever. I don't want to wade through the 10 000 items on Amazon and make a decision on if the seller is trustworthy or not. Much easier to just buy it from somewhere else and skip all the mental load. Bonus point is I don't end up with fake sd cards from Amazon's comingling (so no, being vigilant in which seller you buy from on Amazon didn't help anyways)
- satvikpendem 1y agoOr I just look up the brand on Amazon after reading reviews. If it's reputable, like Anker or Apple, it has its own storefront on Amazon.
- zbentley 1y agoHow do you select the “somewhere else”? For boutique things, luxury goods, or things I am very familiar with brand reputation of, I do what you do. But for ordinary low-cost consumer goods (e.g. computer peripherals, drugstore stuff, guest linens), I struggle to identify retailers that aren’t selling low-quality crap.
- lxgr 1y ago> What Amazon really nailed, and the reason I buy like 90% of things from them, is the easy and known shipping and return policy. Don't forget reviews. Decoupling these (in a trusted way) from the seller's storefront is probably not impossible, but still hard enough to add to Amazon's moat.
- EZ-E 1y agoWhere is the need of agents for this topic of instant payment? I understand AI and agents can be useful to look for a product and get a consensus on the reviews. However when it comes to instant checkout and payment, some web browsers already have auto-fill for the address and payment forms that every netizen has completed hundreds of times already. Assuming web browsers already store the information for auto-fill why not go to the next step and create a protocol to allow them to do one click payment and checkout? In short, I don't see why this instant checkout feature should be locked behind agent usage.
- malthaus 1y agoleaving the use case aside (i don't think it's needed, sensible or succesful) - i have to say i'm admiring how stripe manages to be forward thinking and takes a smart strategic position on every new wave that appears. never full on moving the tanker like zuckerberg or a16z but always ready to sell shovels to a (potantially) viable submarket that is aligned with their mission and becoming a strategic player in that angle. very smart.
- alxfrnr 1y agoSo they use all the reviews and product testing they ingest to come-up with results, then they let you buy whatever they list in 1-click and bank a commission. A comission that would have gone in the pockets of an affiliate with actual hands on experience on the product (not talking about all the SEO crap of course), effectively killing the affiliates who provided the needed data for the rankings in the first place. It also paves the way for ads in this type of answer down the line and incentivizes enshitification even further. If it would be Google doing it, everybody would raise their shields. But as openAI is still too small, we'll let it happen without saying or doing anything, right? It hides stores/brands reputation, value-prop and differenciators, likely favoring the established big players and makes it even harder for smaller players to enter. What about the ethics of having openAI as the gatekeeper for product/brands inclusion? Right now it mighht look like a clever business move but it establishes dangerous foundations and gives them too much power if they keep growing.
- alwahi 1y agowow, i can't wait for ai to hallucinate a 10k charge for my account...
- scottydelta 1y agoI don’t see people outside US and western countries using this where there are very few credit card protections. Especially countries like India which could be a big market has a second otp based auth on all cards for each payment which wouldn’t work with this. On top of that the avg income of an Indian user is less than 300$ per month, do you think they have a credit card? Much easier for them to ask for link and buy it themselves rather than any sort of surprise charge that can’t be refunded.
- TradingPlaces 1y agoNaive question. How does the method in the OpenAI and Stripe flow charts differ from buying from a 3rd party seller on Amazon, which requires no agent? I don’t see what the agent is doing independently in the payment part.
- hsuduebc2 1y agoPretty cool. The worry, though, is the gradual enshittification we’ve seen elsewhere: vendors buying placement in search results, and the product slowly becoming less useful for actual users. Hopefully it doesn’t go that way. The one small piece of optimism is that OpenAI isn’t a conventional shareholder-driven company forced into maximum short-term profit. For now, at least.
- stronglikedan 1y agoIt it can automatically do my returns, I'm in! It would save me so much money since there's something in me that just doesn't like doing returns. When I'm buying, I tell myself "hey, no problem, free returns!", but when it comes time to actually do the return I procrastinate until the return window closes most of the time. I don't know if it's return anxiety or what.
- neerajjain22 1y agoTo me, it feels like a backward step. The opportunity was to solve for agentic shopping from anywhere in the world. Instead, they are making an Amazon clone in 2025!