Now you can do your groceries on ChatGPT American giant Walmart has announced a partnership with OpenAI

ChatGPT has been described in countless ways: psychologist, lover, professor, nutritionist, to name a few; now the list officially includes merchant. Business of Fashion reports that the American retail giant Walmart has officially entered a partnership with OpenAI, with the goal of encouraging users to shop directly from the chatbot.

The agreement, announced by Daniel Danker, Walmart’s executive vice president of AI, product & design, opens a new phase for online shopping: one where artificial intelligence becomes not only an assistant, but also a sales platform. On ChatGPT, users will be able to browse and purchase clothing, entertainment products, packaged food, and household items from both Walmart and the wholesale chain Sam’s Club, while integration with existing accounts will simplify payment and delivery processes.

The feature, set to launch in the fall, will not include fresh food, a decision driven by the fact that customers tend to buy similar items on a weekly basis. Still, it represents a decisive step for the retailer, which has long used AI to optimize inventory, plan shifts, and even speed up fashion production. “We want to bring convenience directly to where customers are,” said Danker, emphasizing that the goal is to turn ChatGPT into a key sales touchpoint.

The new chapter of online shopping

Walmart’s move is part of a broader trend among retail giants. BoF points out that OpenAI has already signed similar deals with Etsy and Shopify, while other brands are experimenting with chatbots capable of responding to customer queries in real time and providing tailored recommendations. According to a Salesforce report, during the 2022 holiday season, online sales in the United States grew by 4%, partly thanks to the growing use of AI assistants. The same Salesforce report states that 92% of retailers are already investing in this technology, 59% use it to help in-store employees recommend products, and 55% rely on digital assistants to guide online shoppers through product assortments.

And the forecasts are clear: according to Gartner, by 2027, more than half of consumers will regularly use AI-based personal shoppers to make purchasing decisions. The shift is already underway; according to Canadian firm Springs, 40% of users are already using chatbots to explore online catalogs, with a direct impact on sales (+67%) and profits (+20–40%).

Do we really need to shop on ChatGPT?

Walmart’s integration with ChatGPT raises a broader question: are we concentrating all our energy and our data into a single point of access? In just a few years, OpenAI has created the most widely used generative models on the market, from Sora to ChatGPT. Then, last year, came the partnership with Apple, which integrated the world’s most popular language model into its operating system. With this new chapter, it’s natural to wonder whether convergence toward ChatGPT (or any major chatbot) will become the new normal in a market that was once fragmented across websites, apps, and marketplaces. A centralization that, while efficient, risks reshaping the very dynamics of digital commerce, potentially even encroaching on the territory of non-competitive retail.

For retailers, ChatGPT becomes a universal storefront, able to filter, recommend, and sell, but for users, it means delegating their power of choice to a system that organizes and directs consumption based on optimization logic rather than discovery. In the end, Walmart’s goal is to bring shopping to where we already are: inside an increasingly closed digital ecosystem where artificial intelligence mediates not just our tastes, but our decisions. It’s the final step toward an interface-free e-commerce era, where the store is no longer a place (not even a virtual one), but an algorithm.