OpenAI’s plans to make ChatGPT into an e-commerce hub aren’t exactly panning out—at least, not yet. In an announcement on Tuesday, the company revealed that it’s pivoting away from a recently launched feature that let users buy items directly from the chatbot’s interface.
OpenAI originally launched buying capabilities in ChatGPT last year—positioning itself as a “shopping assistant” that could connect consumers to relevant vendors. A feature called “Instant Checkout” launched in September and encouraged users to talk with the chatbot about what they were looking to buy and, much like a traditional e-commerce site, add products to a checkout cart within ChatGPT itself. The items were purchased from the vendors themselves, but ChatGPT acted as a portal for those purchases.
