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OpenAI plans to take a cut from online product sales made directly through ChatGPT, as the Sam Altman-led group looks to further develop ecommerce features in the hunt for new revenues.
The San Francisco-based company currently displays products on the platform with an option to click through links to online retailers. It also announced a partnership with payments group Shopify in April.
According to multiple people familiar with the proposals, it now aims to integrate a checkout system into ChatGPT, which ensures users complete transactions within the platform. Merchants that receive and fulfil orders in this way will pay a commission to OpenAI.
The ecommerce push marks a strategic shift for the lossmaking start-up, valued at $300bn, which has made revenue primarily from subscriptions to premium services.
Taking a cut of sales from ChatGPT would allow the company to make money from users of its free version, a so-far untapped source of revenue.
OpenAI’s move also represents a further threat to Google’s business model, as consumers increasingly move to AI chatbots to conduct searches and discover products.
The feature is still in development, so the details may change. However, OpenAI and partners such as Shopify have been presenting early versions to brands and discussing financial terms, these people added.
Shopify offers checkout technology that can be integrated into other online services. It already works with social media platforms, for instance underpinning TikTok’s shopping feature.
OpenAI declined to comment. Shopify did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
ChatGPT’s product recommendations are currently generated based on whether they are relevant to the user’s query and other available context, such as memory or instructions, like a specified budget.
OpenAI has recently enhanced its memory, which allows the model to remember user preferences and provide more personalised responses.
However, when a user clicks on a product, OpenAI “may show a list of merchants offering it”, according to its website.
“This list is generated based on merchant and product metadata we receive from third-party providers. Currently, the order in which we display merchants is predominantly determined by these providers,” it adds.
OpenAI does not factor in price or shipping into these merchant options but expects “this to evolve as we continue to improve the shopping experience”.
Brands and advertising agencies have been experimenting with how to promote their products in chatbot search results, for example, by posting content that they believe will be more likely to be picked up by the models. The practice, similar to so-called search engine optimisation (SEO), has become known by some in the industry as “AIO”.
“It starts to pose big and difficult questions — around what ‘preferences’ AI shows in its results,” one advertising chief executive said. “This can potentially destroy the idea of paid search via traditional platforms, and also of course disintermediate the way [advertising] agencies operate today.”
As recently as December, OpenAI — which is currently restructuring into a for-profit company — said it had “no active plans to pursue advertising”.
However chief financial officer Sarah Friar told the Financial Times it was considering options to introduce advertising but wanted to be “thoughtful about when and where we implement them”.
Altman told the Stratechery newsletter in March: “We’re never going to take money to change placement or whatever, but if you buy something through Deep Research [ChatGPT’s researching tool] that you found, we’re going to charge like a 2 per cent affiliate fee or something.”
