Your telephone buzzes at 6 a.m. It’s ChatGPT: “I see you’re traveling to New York this week. Based on your preferences, I’ve found three restaurants near your hotel. Would you like me to make a reservation?”
This isn’t science fiction. On Sept. 29, 2025, OpenAI and cost processor Stripe introduced the Agentic Trade Protocol. This generation permits you to purchase issues immediately from Etsy inside ChatGPT conversations. ChatGPT customers are scheduled to achieve get right of entry to to over 1 million different Shopify traders, from primary family emblem names to small stores as neatly.
As advertising and marketing researchers who learn about how AI impacts client habits, we consider we’re seeing the start of the largest shift in how other people store since smartphones arrived. The general public do not know it’s going down.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT takes on e-commerce with Etsy, Shopify partnership.
From looking out to being served
For 3 many years, the web has labored the similar approach: You wish to have one thing, you Google it, you evaluate choices, you make a decision, you purchase. You’re in regulate.
That technology is finishing.
AI buying groceries assistants are evolving thru 3 levels. First got here “on-demand AI.” You ask ChatGPT a query, it solutions. That’s the place most of the people are nowadays.
Quickly comes “autopilot AI,” the place AI makes purchases for you with minimum enter from you. “Order flowers for my anniversary next week.” ChatGPT exams your calendar, recalls personal tastes, processes cost and confirms supply.
Every section provides comfort however will give you much less regulate.
The manipulation downside
AI’s responses create what researchers name an “advice illusion.” When ChatGPT suggests 3 inns, you don’t see them as commercials. They really feel like suggestions from a an expert buddy. However you don’t know whether or not the ones inns paid for placement or whether or not higher choices exist that ChatGPT didn’t display you.
Conventional promoting is one thing most of the people have realized to acknowledge and brush aside. However AI suggestions really feel goal even if they’re no longer. With one-tap buying, all the procedure occurs so easily that you may no longer pause to check choices.
OpenAI isn’t by myself on this race. In the similar month, Google introduced its competing protocol, AP2. Microsoft, Amazon and Meta are development an identical methods. Whoever wins will likely be in place to regulate how billions of other people purchase issues, probably shooting a proportion of trillions of greenbacks in annual transactions.
What we’re giving up
This comfort comes with prices most of the people haven’t considered.
Selection: At the moment, you notice more than one choices whilst you seek. With AI because the intermediary, you may see simplest 3 choices ChatGPT chooses. Complete companies may transform invisible if AI chooses to forget about them.
Energy of evaluating: When ChatGPT suggests merchandise with one-tap checkout, the friction that made you pause and evaluate disappears.
The AI autopilot scale displays how comfort trumps selection and regulate.
Yuanyuan (Gina) Cui and Patrick van Esch
It’s going down quicker than you suppose
ChatGPT reached 800 million weekly customers via September 2025, rising 4 instances quicker than social media platforms did. Main shops started the usage of OpenAI’s Agentic Trade Protocol inside days of its release.
Historical past displays other people persistently underestimate how temporarily they adapt to handy applied sciences. Now not way back most of the people wouldn’t call to mind going in a stranger’s automobile. Uber now has 150 million customers.
Comfort all the time wins. The query isn’t whether or not AI buying groceries will transform mainstream. It’s whether or not other people will stay any actual regulate over what they purchase and why.
What you’ll do
The open web gave other people an international of knowledge and selection at their fingertips. The AI revolution may take that away. Now not via forcing other people, however via making it really easy to let the set of rules make a decision that they put out of your mind what it’s love to actually select for themselves. Purchasing issues is turning into as inconsiderate as sending a textual content.
As well as, a unmarried corporate may transform the gatekeeper for all virtual buying groceries, with the opportunity of monopolization past even Amazon’s present dominance in e-commerce. We consider that it’s necessary to a minimum of have a lively public dialog about whether or not that is the long run other people in truth need.
Listed below are some steps you’ll take to withstand the trap of comfort:
Query AI ideas. When ChatGPT suggests merchandise, acknowledge you’re seeing hand-picked possible choices, no longer all of your choices. Sooner than one-tap purchases, pause and ask: Would I purchase this if I needed to talk over with 5 web sites and evaluate costs?
Evaluate your privateness settings in moderation. Perceive what you’re buying and selling for comfort.
Speak about this with family and friends. The shift to AI buying groceries is occurring with out public consciousness. The time to have conversations about appropriate limits is now, earlier than one-tap buying turns into so customary that wondering it sort of feels atypical.
The invisible ticket
AI will be informed what you need, perhaps even earlier than you need it. Each and every time you faucet “Buy now” you’re coaching it – instructing it your patterns, your weaknesses, what time of day you impulse purchase.
Our caution isn’t about rejecting generation. It’s about spotting the trade-offs. Each and every comfort has a price. Each and every faucet is information. The corporations development those methods are making a bet you received’t understand, and usually they’re most probably proper.
