What changed
OpenAI expanded visual product browsing, comparison and image-based shopping in ChatGPT, supported by merchant feeds through its Agentic Commerce Protocol. The company emphasized routing users to merchant checkout rather than making Instant Checkout the central experience.
Why it matters
AI shopping is moving toward discovery and decision support while merchants retain checkout, fulfillment and customer ownership. Product feeds and attribution become as important as model-generated recommendations.
What to do
Merchants should submit structured, fresh product data and test how variants, availability, price and policy are represented. Users should verify price, seller, returns and sponsored placement on the merchant site before buying.
Caveat
The experience rolled out by plan and market, and product coverage depended on participating merchants and feed quality. Recommendations may reflect incomplete catalogs, advertising or ranking incentives; visual similarity is not product equivalence.