How AI Is Transforming E-Commerce—And What Comes Next

In a recent interview, Sam Altman said: "If you buy something through Deep Research that you found, we’re going to charge like a 2% affiliate fee or something. That would be cool, I’d have no problem with that. And maybe there’s a tasteful way we can do ads, but I don’t know. I kind of just don’t like ads that much." Source: https://stratechery.com/2025/an-interview-with-openai-ceo-sam-altman-about-building-a-consumer-tech-company/ It seems OpenAI doesn’t yet realize that it's sitting on a gold mine for online shopping. There is, in fact, a tasteful and privacy-respecting way to do advertising—and it’s called agentic e-commerce. E-commerce is broken—for both shoppers and merchants. For shoppers, the experience is frustrating. Despite being constantly tracked across the web, every visit to an online store feels like starting from scratch, no memory, limited personalization. We're bombarded with irrelevant ads that rarely understand our actual needs or timing. For merchants, it's even worse. Customer acquisition costs are sky-high. Most traffic is low-intent and low-quality, resulting in conversion rates of just 2-4% (compared to ~40% in physical retail). As the old saying goes: "Half of my marketing budget is wasted; I just don’t know which half." Here’s the twist: OpenAI, through ChatGPT, holds an unprecedented opportunity to change that. Many of us use ChatGPT regularly to explore questions, make decisions, and reflect on our preferences—from what gift to buy, to what vacation to plan, to how we think about fashion, food, and so much more. Our entire personality... This creates a deeply rich, nuanced profile of each user. And here's the magic: it’s all in natural language. That means it's readable, editable, and—most importantly—transparent to users. Enter agentic e-commerce. Much has been said about AI-powered personal shopping assistants. But there's a broader, more powerful vision: a dual-agent system. One where both shoppers and stores have agents. The store agent promotes its inventory not by buying ads or bidding on keywords, but by contacting shopper agents directly. The shopper agent, acting as a deeply personalized gatekeeper, evaluates these offers and only surfaces those that are highly relevant: the rare find, the perfect match, the great deal. No need to expose our profile data—because relevance doesn’t require sharing. Only the shopper agent needs access to our preferences to filter and surface the most fitting offers. No creepy tracking. Just curated, timely discovery. Private, transparent, and fully under user control. In this model, ChatGPT becomes the ultimate shopping agent. Not just reactive, but proactive. Not just a chatbot, but a broker of trust between shoppers and stores. It flips the economics of e-commerce: No more wasteful ad spend. Merchants reach high-intent buyers. Shoppers enjoy discovery with relevance and privacy. OpenAI may be on the verge of transforming not just how we search, but how we shop. And the opportunity? Easily worth billions.

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