Shopping online is easier than ever. Remember when you had to juggle 20 tabs, read through endless reviews and buyer's guides, and hunt through promo code sites to find a good deal? In 2025, AI can do all that for you. From researching products and comparing prices to finding deals and even carrying you all the way to checkout, the process is easy and, dare I say, fun.
In time for the holiday shopping season, OpenAI has shifted from general-purpose helper into shopping assistant. Shopping Research inside ChatGPT now builds full buyer's guides from simple prompts, asks clarifying questions, cites sources and steers people toward checkout without the usual flow and analytics visibility of ecommerce sites. The rollout spans web and mobile for all logged-in plans, with near-unlimited usage through the holidays. If shoppers start trusting AI chatbots over retail websites and online articles, the first and possibly last stop in e-commerce shifts to chat.
Adobe's initial Black Friday e-commerce data projects that consumers will spend a record $11.7 billion online, up 8.3% from 2024. Shoppers are expected to take advantage of deals early and outpace Cyber Monday spending, as they anticipate finding the best deals on Friday, according to Adobe. Users are hunting for toys, electronics, and skincare as gifts, with Labubus and Lego sets expected to sell quickly.
As OpenAI seeks more ways to make money, ChatGPT's potential as a shopping assistant is one promising idea: You tell the bot what you're thinking about buying, and it will help you make comparisons, sort prices and answer intricate product questions. With any luck, those answers might even be right. Crucially, the assumption is that many people will prefer to shop online this way rather than use their current methods,
But retail media ads are effective they appear in such long lists of products, Shields argues. If purchase suggestions become tailored by AI chatbots, doesn't that mean fewer opportunities for consumers to see ads for alternatives? Besides, Shields says, the idea of an impartial AI shopping assistant feels incompatible with the Walmart deal. Will Walmart be ChatGPT's preferred retailer, for example, even if its prices are higher?
