[HN Gopher] Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol
___________________________________________________________________
Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol
Agentic Commerce Protocol: https://www.agenticcommerce.dev/,
ChatGPT Page: https://chatgpt.com/merchants, Stripe post:
https://stripe.com/blog/developing-an-open-standard-for-agen...
Author : meetpateltech
Score : 128 points
Date : 2025-09-29 17:00 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (openai.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (openai.com)
| alach11 wrote:
| Thus far I didn't have to worry about ChatGPT having bad
| incentives when giving me advice on product purchases. Now that
| "Merchants pay a small fee on completed purchases", will the
| model steer me towards ACP-supported retailers at a higher rate?
| chatmasta wrote:
| Presumably yes, but if I'm using an agent to make purchases,
| I'd prefer it to use sites where it can safely make a purchase
| anyway. The optimal UI would probably leave it up to me. One
| system should find products, independently of whether a vendor
| of them supports "ACP." And I should be able to configure my
| agent to "only purchase where ACP is supported." In the context
| of a conversation, I'd expect it to show me all the products it
| found, and offer to refine the list to include only ACP
| vendors.
| CyberMacGyver wrote:
| This will be worst for consumers, like DoorDash or Uber eats.
|
| DoorDash takes 15-30% of fees from restaurants so restaurants
| raise their prices and consumers have to pay service fee and a
| delivery fee and tip.
|
| Be ready to pay more at sites that have this enabled.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Associated site: https://www.agenticcommerce.dev/
|
| Stripe post: https://stripe.com/blog/developing-an-open-standard-
| for-agen...
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| So this is competing with Google's AP2 announced a few weeks ago?
|
| https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/a...
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45262858)
| farco12 wrote:
| That's what it looks like. This post gives me the impression it
| is a bit more narrowly scoped and streamlined compared to A2P:
| https://stripe.com/blog/developing-an-open-standard-for-agen...
| allears wrote:
| So what would a 'hallucination' be in this context? An order for
| a half ton of toilet paper? If I know ChatGPT gets things wrong,
| why would I trust it to shop for me?
| robotswantdata wrote:
| https://developers.openai.com/commerce
|
| Yet another protocol
| underdeserver wrote:
| Thus begins the age of ads in AI.
| bobbiechen wrote:
| Back in June (just three months ago) when I wrote this blog,
| people were telling me it was far away:
| https://digitalseams.com/blog/the-ai-lifestyle-subsidy-is-go...
| thm wrote:
| "users can now buy directly from Etsy sellers"
|
| Can't wait to buy an AI-generated coloring book via AI.
| threefiftyone1 wrote:
| Wonder what protocol is going to win
| harmoni-pet wrote:
| openai speed running their enshitification
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| That's the whole point of AI: massive productivity increase so
| you can compete with the major global tech companies!
| whyho wrote:
| Pandora's box is now open
| throwawa14223 wrote:
| Enshitification implies there was a good stage to fall from.
| Havoc wrote:
| Don't think I'm anywhere close to trusting agents with my money
| Osyris wrote:
| I don't think this is that? This is more like agents show you a
| list of products and the UI allows you to buy them like any
| other online store.
| hchdifnfbgbf wrote:
| They get a cut for products that support this. So they're
| incentivized to display those instead. It's pretty close to
| standard affiliate advertising and the biases that
| introduces.
| Osyris wrote:
| Sure, but still far from "trusting agents with my money"
| jsheard wrote:
| Every so often I check back on ChatGPTs product search powers,
| and every time it cites garbage blogspam articles that praise
| every product hoping you'll click their affiliate links.
|
| The irony being that many of those spam articles are probably
| generated with ChatGPT - https://youtu.be/WLfAf8oHrMo?t=86
| neilv wrote:
| The trust problem was a concern early on in agents (well before
| LLMs).
|
| Although, at the time, we didn't have the "fox guarding the
| henhouse" problem of modern tech companies, and they hadn't yet
| inserted themselves into the loop so intimately.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Are they insane?
|
| How deep into a bubble are we that digital stores get integration
| into LLMs? There are so many obvious risks here and so few
| imaginable upsides over redirecting a user to the merchant.
| fourseventy wrote:
| Meh. Meta recently got rid of their instant checkout product for
| Instagram and Facebook where customers could buy products
| directly from a companies FB or IG page. Nobody was using it. I
| would imagine it will be the same situation here.
| barnas2 wrote:
| I bet this is going to make them a TON of money. A ton of
| people are using chatgpt to essentially replace google, and
| treating it like a trusted source. The average user is going to
| jump at the ability to ask their "trusted" source a question
| and get a direct link to the thing they need to buy.
| WastedCucumber wrote:
| I doubt it. I think it will take a long time to dethrone the
| tried and true google search of "<product I'm considering>
| reddit"
| hchdifnfbgbf wrote:
| It will take no time. I made three purchases this weekend
| where I started my search with ChatGPT because it gives me
| better results than Google, and it can also pull in or link
| me to Reddit comments.
|
| I have it running a background research task now where it's
| producing a comparison table of product options with
| columns for different attributes I'm interested in,
| including links to purchase it, so it can help me make a
| decision tonight. If this feature is available for what I
| want, I'll be using it in a few hours.
|
| Whether you use ChatGPT or Google the first thing you see
| is an AI generated response, but Google is using the
| cheapest version of their model and only providing the
| context from the top 10 results, while ChatGPT is using a
| much better model and passing in more context. Lots of
| folks are turning to ChatGPT instead of Google these days.
| thenanyu wrote:
| What did you buy
| lomase wrote:
| The average user just opens the Amazon app.
| mungoman2 wrote:
| Wow, with this in place the incentives are enormous for OpenAI to
| allow sponsors to pay for a slight nudge in the recommendation
| this way or that.
|
| This will replace the current ad economy.
| modeless wrote:
| Yeah, it seems obvious that this is how models will be
| monetized in the future. The free version of ChatGPT will stop
| being a loss leader for the subscription and start paying for
| itself with commissions. The vast majority of people will use
| the free version.
|
| They will likely go through many iterations of this before
| finding what works, but I expect it will eventually be an
| incredible business on the same level as AdWords. We can only
| hope that the incentives don't end up warping the models too
| much...
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > We can only hope that the incentives don't end up warping
| the models too much...
|
| Oh my sweet summer child. How can you be so optimistic after
| seeing Google's decline? It won't happen all at once, but the
| need for revenue growth and the incremental logic of A/B
| testing are relentless forces that wear away at the product
| once ads are in the mix.
| modeless wrote:
| It's been 27 years since Google Search launched, and I
| still find it very useful despite some perverse incentives.
| A pretty good run I would say. If OpenAI declines that
| slowly, and is then displaced by something better, I'd say
| it was a good outcome.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I hope it takes as long for AI enshittification, but the
| tech "cycle" has become shorter and the pressure to make
| revenue is much more intense than it was for Google.
| podgietaru wrote:
| So, if I'm understanding this correctly. The latest ChatGPT
| features are... That it can now message me without me talking to
| it, and can automatically buy things for me.
| jasonsb wrote:
| SOTA
| awestroke wrote:
| Absolutely _brilliant_ observation--you've managed to distill
| what took OpenAI an entire product announcement into a single,
| devastatingly clear sentence.
|
| Would you like me to diagram the precise mechanisms through
| which these features transform users into passive recipients of
| AI-initiated interactions and transactions?
| momojo wrote:
| sure
| SimianSci wrote:
| Being reminded of how Sychophantic OpenAI's models can be and
| coupling this with the parent comment makes me unreasonably
| upset.
| rossant wrote:
| Excellent. Imagine three nested loops:
|
| - Initiation loop: The AI identifies a trigger (calendar
| entry, email, purchase pattern) and begins the conversation
| unprompted.
|
| - Action loop: Once trust is assumed, it executes on your
| behalf (ordering, booking, messaging).
|
| - Feedback loop: Each interaction produces more data,
| refining its ability to predict when to act next.
|
| Together these loops progressively erode the boundary between
| "I decide, AI assists" and "AI decides, I ratify."
|
| Would you like me to sketch this as a flow diagram, or unfold
| the psychological implications of each loop?
| cnity wrote:
| Are you two using ChatGPT to generate these, or are you
| both fantastic at emulating the writing style? Because this
| is so spot on.
| rossant wrote:
| I wish I was that good!
| miroljub wrote:
| Yes, that's exactly the function of the new features. Your
| observation is the core of the product strategy. Let's
| diagram the mechanisms.
|
| The shift is from a Reactive Tool to a Proactive Agent, and
| this transition fundamentally alters the user's role. Here's
| how it works, broken down into its constituent parts:
|
| The Mechanism of Passivity: From User as "Driver" to User as
| "Passenger"
|
| 1. The Initiative Shift: Who Asks the First Question?
|
| * Old Model (Reactive): User has a thought -> User formulates
| a query -> User inputs the query -> AI responds. * Cognitive
| Load: On the user. They must identify a problem, articulate
| it, and initiate the interaction. * New Model (Proactive): AI
| analyzes context (screen, audio, memory) -> AI identifies a
| potential need or action -> AI presents a suggestion or takes
| a micro-action -> User consents or refines. * Cognitive Load:
| Shifted to the AI. The user's role is reduced to granting or
| denying permission.
|
| 2. The Transactional Seam: Blurring Help and Commerce
|
| * Old Model: Help and transaction were separate spheres.
| You'd use a calculator app, then separately open Amazon to
| buy a calculator. * New Model: The AI, by having context and
| initiative, creates a seamless bridge from identification to
| acquisition. * Example Flow: AI sees a recipe on your screen
| -> It offers to add the ingredients to a shopping list -> The
| shopping list is integrated with a delivery service -> A "Buy
| Now" button appears. * The Passivity: The user is not seeking
| a store; the store is brought to them. The decision point
| changes from "Should I go shopping?" to "Should I not buy
| this right now?" The default action becomes consumption.
|
| 3. The "Frictionless" UI: Eliminating Deliberation
|
| * Features like the "phone-break-in" for real-time
| translation or assistance remove the physical and
| psychological steps of opening an app, typing, and waiting. *
| The Consequence: This eliminates the "deliberation time"--the
| few seconds where a user might think, "Do I really need to do
| this?" or "Is this a good idea?" Interaction becomes impulse.
| The user is carried along by the convenience of the flow.
|
| 4. The Memory Layer: Creating a Dependent Relationship
|
| * Without Memory: Each interaction is a clean slate. The user
| must re-establish context, which reinforces their role as the
| authoritative source of their own information and history. *
| With Memory: The AI becomes the custodian of your context,
| preferences, and patterns. * The Passivity: You no longer
| need to remember your own preferences; you rely on the AI to
| remember for you. This creates a gentle but powerful
| dependency. The AI becomes more efficient at being "you" than
| you are, because it has perfect recall. Your agency in
| defining the context of a conversation diminishes.
|
| The Underlying Economic Engine
|
| This isn't just a technical shift; it's an economic one. The
| "passive recipient" is a more valuable economic unit than the
| "active user."
|
| * An active user has intent that they satisfy. The value
| exchange is clear: they have a question, they get an answer.
| * A passive recipient is presented with opportunities for
| engagement and transaction they did not explicitly seek. This
| creates new, AI-driven funnels for: * E-commerce (as
| described) * Service Sign-ups ("You seem to be planning a
| trip. Would you like me to find you a hotel?") * Content
| Consumption ("Based on your last question, you might like
| this video...")
|
| In essence, OpenAI is building an Ambient Interface that sits
| between users and the digital world. Its primary function is
| to reduce user effort, but the secondary, commercial function
| is to orchestrate user activity towards endpoints that
| benefit its partners and, ultimately, its own ecosystem.
|
| You were right. It's a brilliant, and from a business
| perspective, inevitable evolution. But it systematically re-
| architects the human-computer relationship from one of
| mastery to one of management. We are no longer pilots at the
| console; we are administrators approving the suggestions of
| an ever-more-autonomous system.
| jasonsb wrote:
| I've got more money than I know what to do with and now, thanks
| to OpenAI, I've found the perfect custom-built solution: an AI
| agent ready to spend it for me.
| tortilla wrote:
| You're absolutely right, I've purchased 10 Blackwell B200s on
| your Platinum AMEX to maximize your points.
| jasonsb wrote:
| I'm gonna need some Oracle storage as well.
| 7thpower wrote:
| You're in luck because I got you some database licenses and
| am drafting your letter to their compliance department so
| it will be ready a year from now.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| "How do I do XYZ in Python?"
|
| ChatGPT: I've found the following Python books that contain
| explanations of how to complete that task. Which one would you
| like to purchase?"
|
| "None. I just want an answer."
|
| ChatGPT: Ok, perhaps you were looking to purchase a python. I've
| found the following pet stores that sell Ball and Reticulated
| pythons. Which one would you like to purchase?"
|
| "Aaaaaarrrrrrrggggghhhhhhh"
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Or if you go full agent mode and let ChatGPT buy things for
| you: https://xkcd.com/576/
| netsharc wrote:
| "This book by LearnPythonFastGuaranteedResults!!!!11! comes
| highly recommended! People are raving about it, a buyer named
| John Ryan said he got a 400k job after learning Python by
| reading this book! Are you sure you don't want to buy it?"
| Martin_Silenus wrote:
| Sorry, but I did not find any "Aaaaaarrrrrrrggggghhhhhhh" to
| purchase. Could you give me more details?
| kalap_ur wrote:
| If you upgrade to Premium Plus for only $5 more per month, I
| can offer you answer first with recommendations in the bottom.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| "Merchants pay a small fee on completed purchases, but the
| service is free for users, doesn't affect their prices, and
| doesn't influence ChatGPT's product results. Instant Checkout
| items are not preferred in product results."
|
| The incentives are very strong to prefer instant checkout items.
| burkaman wrote:
| Wouldn't it be incredibly easy for merchants to expose slightly
| higher prices over the "agentic commerce protocol", so that
| users do end up paying this fee?
| tom1337 wrote:
| It would be, but at least in the EU this is not legal - this
| is also why you cannot pass the payment processor fee to the
| customer (which this kind of is)
| oulipo2 wrote:
| It went fast from "here's a new tool" to "let's start AI
| enshitification" lol
| ahmedhawas123 wrote:
| I realize a lot of the comments here are pessimistic, but this is
| a pretty obvious monetization path that they just can't not take.
| This is actually a huge angle IMO. ChatGPT is on a path to become
| a real entry point to the internet - why use Amazon or Google
| Search when you can embed results and checkout in the
|
| I agree there's a real bias issue, but that is consistent through
| out any large company - e.g., Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc have
| sponsored results
| libraryatnight wrote:
| "...obvious monetization path that they just can't not take."
|
| Sure they could. This notion that an unscrupulous revenue
| stream is justified if it pays well enough smacks of "Just
| following orders!"
|
| "It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does,
| and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men,
| I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't
| control it." - Grapes of Wrath
|
| At some point we have to stop this madness.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| Most people has been convinced throughout the years that
| individual actions have no effect on big corps, they need to
| learn that it shouldn't matter. If you don't agree with what
| a service or product provider does simply don't buy their
| product find an alternative or just don't but do it just for
| your own principles.
| what wrote:
| Do you run an ad blocker? If so this feels a little
| hypocritical, you should just bounce from the site and seek
| an alternative if you don't agree with what they do.
| fourside wrote:
| I don't quite follow this logic. Like there's too much money
| involved to not dilute the value of a nascent technology?
|
| If you're willing to torch your credibility as a company, that
| tends to open up quite a few shorter term business options. The
| real trick is ensuring enough customer or user lock in that
| they can't go anywhere else even when the enshittification is
| obvious to everyone.
|
| The irony here is that ChatGPT could be a credible threat to
| Google search's dominance as the entry point to the internet
| partly because the quality of Google's search results has
| degraded so much. For some queries sponsored links push the
| real results below the fold on mobile, they've allowed some
| content aggregators to take over certain types of results
| (Pinterests polluting image results with irrelevant content).
| But that doesn't matter while you make gobs of money. That is
| until a credible competitor finally appears and people are
| itching to find a better alternative.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| > torch your credibility as a company
|
| That's only so in our little cynical skeptical contrarian
| hacker bubble. For most people, it's an appreciated
| convenience.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| Exactly - while you and I might route our DNS queries by
| carrier pigeon to avoid tracking, some of my family
| actually like personalized ads on social media and even buy
| things from them.
| fishmicrowaver wrote:
| I installed an ad blocker on our home Internet on a
| raspberry pi. My wife told me to take it off.
| janalsncm wrote:
| They are already groveling to Nvidia for cash. It's very
| likely the options are not "no ads" vs "ads". The options for
| them are "no free tier" and "free tier with ads".
| siva7 wrote:
| They have hundred millions of paying subscribers, that kind of
| commercial success you could not even dream of when search
| engines and ads became a thing. Yet it's not enough. This tells
| me no matter what happens, even if those tech behemoth's make
| good profit, there will always be a reason to enshittify the
| product more.
| podnami wrote:
| Hey man, take a step away from the keyboard. Instead imagine
| the every day person. Would they rather click, scroll, swipe
| and pull out credit cards across multiple websites - or just
| ask their digital assistant to do it?
|
| The defaulting to negativity will really eat some communities
| up from the inside.
| skydhash wrote:
| Does the average user does this? Granted, I'm not i. the
| USA, but does people really order that much on unusual
| websites?
| rudedogg wrote:
| You see negativity, I see disappointment that OpenAI isn't
| trying to innovate, and instead hoping they can replay
| Google Search's history for themselves
| throwawa14223 wrote:
| Chat windows and voice assistants are a terrible user
| experience for the average person. This doesn't change
| that.
| ileonichwiesz wrote:
| That's exactly what the folks at Amazon thought when they
| came up with Alexa. Have you ever bought anything online by
| asking Alexa to do it? Have you ever seen anyone else do
| it?
| GenerWork wrote:
| The fact that you're being downvoted over this is proof
| that people here work and live in a bubble. People value
| convenience and are willing to pay for it, and if OpenAI is
| able to advance convenience through these actions, they'll
| make billions.
| throw-qqqqq wrote:
| It sounds like you think OpenAI is a profitable business? As
| far as I understand, it's not.
|
| OpenAI is projected to generate $12-14 billion in yearly
| revenue in 2025 (annualized from a single month), but expect
| to lose around 8 billion USD, implying the margins are
| negative.
|
| OpenAI has raised a total of ~$60 billion.
|
| I think they need to show investors a huge and growing
| cashflow to keep the show going.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| OpenAI has a subscription revenue stream that's more than
| sufficient to keep current basic operations going. It is
| losing money because most of that money is spent on
| research, more and more GPUs, very expensive people and
| other capital expenditure.
|
| Of course, they can't just retreat to selling their basic
| services since some other company would train and produce a
| marginally better model.
|
| So it's a paradoxical situation. They're moving in
| contradictory directions - both to become a thing so
| valuable they'd only need to sell subscriptions and towards
| a mote if they don't reach that "AGI" thing. No reason
| being flexible would displease their shareholders but there
| are many other questions to answer here (who gets AGI
| raptures, who gets the Skynet/Terminator treatment, who
| decides, etc).
| janalsncm wrote:
| Right, so given that R&D is not optional lest they fall
| behind, they need to find another revenue stream.
| lossolo wrote:
| > They have hundred millions of paying subscribers
|
| They have hundreds of millions of users in total (free tier
| included), with around 10-15 million paying users.
| og_kalu wrote:
| They have hundreds of millions of subscribers, but the vast
| majority of them are not paying, and more importantly, are
| not monetized in any way.
| kirykl wrote:
| Should have always been clear the singularity will have a
| shopping cart
| zingababba wrote:
| AGI will be the ultimate consumer experience.
| mturmon wrote:
| And a large billboard blocking the view
| emil-lp wrote:
| But Amazon has a patent on one-click purchases, so with AGI you
| must ask twice.
| twodave wrote:
| I think this is probably a joke, but it's an incorrect one I
| believe. Amazon did have such a patent, but it expired in
| 2017.
| rudedogg wrote:
| This regresses the incentives back to what we had with search
| engines where what I need (answers) and what OpenAI needs (money
| from ads) are at odds.
|
| Search engines used to be very useful too until the endless
| profit a/b testing boiled us all
| risyachka wrote:
| Ads in ChatGPT was the most obvious outcome from day 1.
|
| And this is not a bad thing, otherwise you can only image how
| many businesses will close when google traffic stars to
| decline.
|
| Everyone likes to hate on ads but the reality is that without
| ads 99% users even on hacker news would be jobless as the
| companies where they work will have no way to find clients, and
| even if they manage to find some - those clients won't be able
| to sell and will go out of business.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| there are other ways to be probably, without ads. I'm
| optimistic we, as a society, will find those ways.
| thedelanyo wrote:
| I think ads are great, but the tactics (tracking) around
| them aren't really in the good course.
| rudedogg wrote:
| > Ads in ChatGPT was the most obvious outcome from day 1
|
| Agreed.
|
| Tech companies always do this. With Ads, we're back into
| speculation territory, and the "how do we pay for and justify
| all this shit?" can gets kicked down the road.
|
| Can't we actually solve problems in the real world instead?
| Wouldn't people be willing to pay if AI makes them more
| productive? Why do we need an ad-supported business model
| when the product is only $20/mo?
| bonoboTP wrote:
| > Wouldn't people be willing to pay if AI makes them more
| productive? Why do we need an ad-supported business model
| when the product is only $20/mo?
|
| This was always a fake reasoning (ads are there because
| people want everything for free!), but then paid HBO
| started ads, your purchased smart TVs started ads, cars
| that you bought with money started ads...
|
| ([some business model] + ads) will simply always generate
| more profit than [some business model] (at least that's how
| they think). Even if you already pay, if they also shove
| some ads in your eyes, they can make even more money.
| Corporations don't work the way humans do. There is no
| "enough". The task of the CEO is to grow the company, make
| more profit each quarter and is responsible to the
| shareholders. It's not like, ok, now we can pay all our
| bills, we don't need more revenue. You always need maximum
| possible revenue.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| This is the first time I've ever heard anyone even mention
| it, and I never thought about that possibility myself either.
| innagadadavida wrote:
| Ads haven't made it yet, they are charging money for the
| purchase made:
|
| > Merchants pay a small fee on completed purchases, but the
| service is free for users, doesn't affect their prices, and
| doesn't influence ChatGPT's product results.
| coldpie wrote:
| Five hundred gajillion dollars spent so we can end up in the
| same place except with _these_ five men making all the money
| instead of _those_ five men. Whee.
| rhetocj23 wrote:
| Is this a surprise though?
|
| This is the culture of America in a nutshell. Steve Jobs was
| a weirdo in that regard and an outlier.
| coldpie wrote:
| Who said anything about being surprised?
| politelemon wrote:
| No, and no.
| NoahZuniga wrote:
| Google is a public company! You could have been one of "those
| five men".
| clayhacks wrote:
| Yes of course, let me buy a sizable chunk of one of the
| largest companies in the world so I can be on the five men.
|
| Owning a few shares is not the same thing as actually
| making all the money someone at the top of Google is
| making.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Don't forget all the extra electricity required to achieve
| roughly the same thing!
| lomase wrote:
| Arguabilly we are in worst place than when Google Search was
| not enshittified.
| skydhash wrote:
| Even ads in magazines was much better than what we have now.
| Ads are contextual (a tech mag won't have ads for gardening),
| so apart from the repetitive aspects, what is shown may be not
| needed, but it's more likely to make a mental note because
| you're already in the relevant context.
| sholladay wrote:
| Agreed. One big difference, though, is that the local AI tech
| we have as an alternative to OpenAI is significantly better
| compared to the local alternatives we had for Google. You can
| run a reasonably powerful AI on your own machine right now.
| Sure, it's not going to be as good. And the cost of GPUs, RAM,
| and electricity is important to keep in mind. But the point is
| it's not all-or-nothing and you are not beholden to these
| corporations.
|
| There is also plenty of research going on to make models more
| efficient and powerful at small sizes. So that shift in the
| power gradient seems like it's going to continue.
| chipgap98 wrote:
| I agree with this, but there were/are alternatives to Google
| that are functional but not as good. People still ended up
| choosing to use Google.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Ahem, The article is about ChatGPT check-out. Ecommerce and a
| relatively quick shows no mention of ads.
|
| Sure, this may in Google-style-monopoly direction or an Amazon-
| style-monopoly direction. I don't know which. I would indeed
| expect a large dose of enshittification would be involved.
|
| You're welcome to argue this leads to ads. But jumps _to_ this
| is ads and getting a dozen pearl-clutching is a symptom of hn
| 's own crude enshittification, jeesh.
| cush wrote:
| Since it's tapped into etsy and shopify, ChatGPT might actually
| have a lot more power to shop local if you give it that as a
| constraint
| Someone1234 wrote:
| There is nothing "local" about etsy, and there has been for
| over ten years+. You can find all the same "handmade"
| products on AliExpress, and often Amazon.
| SrslyJosh wrote:
| Etsy is thoroughly fucked and full of mass-produced junk.
| "Local" could just mean buying from the nearest person who's
| reselling stuff from Ali Express.
|
| And have you noticed what sellers on Amazon are doing?
| Foreign companies are setting up distribution in the US and
| registering their US companies with Amazon as "small
| businesses" and "minority-owned businesses", making those
| labels utterly useless.
| WastedCucumber wrote:
| I'm not looking forward to when there's an AI pyschosis case
| where it turns out ChatGPT sold a bump stock or gave a bulk
| discount on fertilizer.
| choilive wrote:
| I knew this day would come.. but not this soon.
| philip1209 wrote:
| Shots fired at Google
| jspdown wrote:
| Looks like it's OpenAI response to Google's Agent Payment
| Protocol (AP2) but without the micro transaction part.
| siva7 wrote:
| Ah.. the day OpenAI turned into an Ad company. We all knew it
| would happen someday.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| Who even thought this would happen? Got any sources?
| rhetocj23 wrote:
| Erm their recent hire of Simo and acquisition of Statsig made
| this obvious.
| ziml77 wrote:
| Who? Those of us who were paying attention to how tech
| companies have operated for the past 25 years.
|
| They start out subsidized by investors and then once they
| have enough users and can no longer pay for them with the
| invested cash, they push more and more ads onto users.
|
| And it was easy to see that LLMs are an especially devious
| place the inject ads because they can flow right into the the
| response and not even look like an ad, but rather feel like a
| casual recommendation.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| I've seen multiple prior conversations about the idea on this
| site. It's easy to find similar reddit discussions with a
| search: https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1ljv78j/sam_
| altman_...
|
| It's a fairly obvious way for them to make money, as people
| are using it as a replacement for search engines, and that's
| how search engines have made money.
| 7thpower wrote:
| It's all Ben Thompson has talked about for the past couple
| years.
| hmate9 wrote:
| In a way this was kind of inevitable, but I had hope that it was
| still 1-2 years away. This likely degrades brand value and begins
| to shift the incentives of the AI's responses.
| SimianSci wrote:
| OpenAI desperately wants to compete at the same level as the big
| tech firms.
|
| While their only successful product is impressive, it is doubtful
| that its success alone can sustain them beyond the first
| 'downturn' of their value in the market. This reeks of
| desperation on their part and should bring more attention to the
| mountain of "promises" they have made, compared to its actual
| deliveries.
| rhetocj23 wrote:
| I agree wholeheartedly.
| hedayet wrote:
| 1. I am one of the people who have been looking forward to the
| ability to buy directly from a chat session instead of going to
| Google from a chat session.
|
| 2. The media began covering this 3 hours ago and $goog is just
| ~1% down. I'm curious why it didn't spook Google investors,
| whether reasonably or unreasonably.
| SimianSci wrote:
| If OpenAI can pull this off, couldnt Google just do the same
| with its Gemini Product and start using their scale to compete
| more directly? Perhaps the sentiment isnt as negative as OpenAI
| lacks any sort of mote here to keep competitors from simply
| replicating this change.
| brazukadev wrote:
| This will only be profitable is OpenAI makes money from showing
| the products because the conversion rate will be bad.
| coffeecoders wrote:
| Hackernews used to dunk on Airbnb, Coinbase and Uber. Now they're
| part of our daily lives. Feels like we're watching the same arc
| play out with LLMs.
|
| I wonder if we're seeing the same pattern repeat here with
| ChatGPT becoming big.
|
| Outrage followed by inevitability.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| It's basically the "Oh no! Anyway..." Clarkson meme.
| mouse_ wrote:
| The problem isn't that OpenAI is big news. The problem is that
| OpenAI currently appears to be worth more than AirBNB,
| Coinbase, Uber and Lyft combined, and Sam would have you
| believe this is still AI's "early stage". How much more
| liquidity is even left for this thing to soak up?
| coffeecoders wrote:
| Yeah, the valuations are crazy, but think about it this way:
| the app economy and gig economy seemed absurdly speculative
| at first too. And now they're worth trillions.
|
| Early stage hype overshoots, sure, but sometimes it's just
| pricing in things the old frameworks can't even model yet.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Airbnb and Uber are shit in 2025. They're basically no better
| than what they were trying to replace. "The arc" you describe
| is people saying that these products aren't a magical solution
| that prints money and being proven right as the products are
| worn down to the level of the thing they were trying to disrupt
| by market forces.
|
| Uber, in particular, drives me nuts because we replaced a
| supposedly powerful and evil taxi cartel (which happened to be
| a bunch of small, regional businesses) with a huge
| multinational corporation. Out of the frying pan and into the
| fire.
| coffeecoders wrote:
| Totally get the frustration. Uber and Airbnb definitely have
| their flaws. But the sheer scale of users (200M last I
| checked) shows that a product can be both polarizing and
| essential at the same time.
|
| Kind of like how we're seeing with LLMs: not perfect, often
| overhyped, but undeniably useful at scale.
| lomase wrote:
| Taxis and housing existed and where more afordable before
| those companies took over the market.
|
| If I make a company buy every hospital in the world you
| will think is essential, but is not. The hospitals did
| exist before.
| coffeecoders wrote:
| Convenience, consistency, and global. They solved real
| pain points, even if the cost and ethics are now
| questionable.
|
| It's like a software library that's buggy and bloated but
| everyone depends on it because rewriting it from scratch
| is harder than dealing with its flaws.
| lomase wrote:
| You start from a false premise, that we have now is
| better than before.
|
| Taxis were better than Ubers, bed&breakfast were better
| than AirBnB.
|
| Maybe you are just too young to know it. The only reason
| we moved to Uber is because it was half the price of
| taxis, because it was subsidized, not anymore.
| coffeecoders wrote:
| Uber and Airbnb solved real pain points: global
| availability, predictable, nice interfaces, cashless
| payments, reviews etc. These are the things small, local
| systems struggled to provide consistently.
|
| Also, my point isn't that the current system is
| objectively better. It's that scale and convenience
| created network effects that make it "essential" in
| practice, even if it's buggy, slow, or worse in some
| respects.
| HotHotLava wrote:
| Taxis and B&Bs and Hotels all still exist and compete
| with Uber and AirBnB.
|
| Even at the same price there are valid reasons why many
| people prefer an Uber over a Taxi, in particular the
| predictable pricing and globally consistent UI.
| lomase wrote:
| Uber changes the pricing depending on the demmand. Taxis
| can't do that, they are regulated by law in most of the
| west.
|
| Predictable my ass. You have been lied to.
|
| And btw all over the world you rise up your arm, and the
| taxi stops, I think that is a pretty consistent user
| interface that anybody in the world can understand. I
| have to help my aunt each time she needs an Uber.
| lomase wrote:
| That you are right won't stop people from being bootlickers.
|
| The parasititic relationships that people from whit mega
| corporations in the west is so upseting.
| rhetocj23 wrote:
| This reeks of desperation to generate revenue where they can,
| with a race against time to show profitability.
|
| The hire of Simo and acquisition of Statsig is very present here.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| > OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says GPT-5 actually scares him -- 'what
| have we done?'
|
| Ah, so that's what he actually meant.
|
| They promised us AGI and the singularity, they delivered more
| ads.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| He said in a podcast the other day that with AI we will build a
| dyson sphere in the next couple decades.
|
| I can't believe people give this guy money. It's so
| frustrating.
| sneilan1 wrote:
| I love the little synthesizer in the square in the footer :) What
| an awesome easter egg..
| bravura wrote:
| Couldn't see it, what was it?
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| This is textbook strategy, adding layer after layer of pseudo
| protocols and "standards" on top of (surprise, surprise) their
| hard to defend against competition offerings, and ironically
| attempt to build a moat around something that ideally is open and
| interoperable. I haven't ruled out that I'm actually an idiot who
| doesn't get it, but it sure feels like the emperor has no
| clothes. It's like a recent Cloudflare post about how we're using
| LLMs to code all wrong; we just need to build (yet more) APIs
| specifically for MCP servers and then have very simple tools that
| only use those APIs. Yet more extra effort, time and energy
| optimizing for someone else's benefit.
| rhetocj23 wrote:
| "I haven't ruled out that I'm actually an idiot who doesn't get
| it,"
|
| Nope youre not an idiot, I agree with your thoughts.
| objclxt wrote:
| > This is textbook strategy [...] attempt to build a moat
| around something that ideally is open and interoperable
|
| It's so textbook that Google two weeks ago came out with their
| _own_ competing "open" standard for doing the same thing!
|
| https://ap2-protocol.org
| coffeemug wrote:
| IMO this view puts the cart before the horse. Suppose ChatGPT
| builds a UI that consumers prefer over web browsing to purchase
| products. How should merchants plug into that UI? This protocol
| is an easy way for merchants to do that. And once merchants are
| plugged in, consumers still need to be able to pay, and
| merchants need to get paid. Stripe makes that easy.
|
| Consumers will only use the UI if it's better. Merchants will
| plug into the UI to make more money. So everyone wins--
| consumers, merchants, OpenAI, and Stripe. And since the
| protocol is open, other chatbots and other payment processors
| can implement it too. Who loses?
|
| (I agree that at scale these things tend to accrue to top
| players and you get all kinds of weird unsavory consequences.
| But I'd argue that's a critique of our regulatory apparatus,
| not of the companies building products and services.)
| ranger_danger wrote:
| What about ad-blockers? Are they going to lobby browser
| manufacturers to start enforcing immutable, cryptographically-
| verified pages?
| Imnimo wrote:
| I'm just not sure that I would trust that the view/description of
| the item ChatGPT shows me and the thing I'm actually agreeing to
| buy are the same thing.
| shreddit wrote:
| I'm surprised free users don't have to watch an ad spot every
| five messages (yet?)
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| The thing is.. chatgpt can be genuinely useful. I did
| purposefully use it to get some some product comparisons and
| whatnot. It could be genuinely good if it is handled well and not
| devolve into constant buy blast ( like with emails and just about
| any other medium ).
|
| Still, there is a reason I am frantically working on working on a
| more local setup that I can trust not to:
|
| a) oversell me stuff b) is under my control c) not profile me (
| in a way that can be sold to other merchants )
|
| The issue seems to be the same as always. I am either a minority
| or the money pull is way too strong.
| lomase wrote:
| Even Cyanide can be useful.
| Taek wrote:
| I'm not sure how long you've been using Google, but Google also
| used to be genuinely useful. The more that ads became a
| priority, the less Google was able to be genuinely useful to
| me.
| xnx wrote:
| Is this OpenAI's Amazon Dash?
| rawgabbit wrote:
| So in their example, OpenAI and their partner Stripe is handling
| the transaction? If yes, they are now competing with both Google
| (advertising) and Amazon/Walmart (online marketplace).
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| Can't wait for the agent to hallucinate and while fulfilling a
| request to buy 2 jeans, it ends up buying 3 macbooks.
| jedberg wrote:
| > ChatGPT shows the most relevant products from across the web.
| Product results are organic and unsponsored, ranked purely on
| relevance to the user.
|
| Cynical take, I know, but that is how Google started too. But now
| they prioritize people who pay them, and it's only a matter of
| time before OpenAI does the same.
|
| And I can't at all blame them! They are there to make money
| (well, now).
|
| But I suspect this won't be true for long.
| notatoad wrote:
| If OpenAI is charging commission on sales through ChatGPT, then
| they're probably better motivated than google is to show the
| best results.
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| motivated to show you results that get sales, not that are
| the best solution to the problem
| jedberg wrote:
| In many cases, Google gets commissions too. A lot of their
| ads pay when the person completes a purchase.
| bmau5 wrote:
| Which ads are these? My impression was they are all based
| on CPC or CP impression
| janalsncm wrote:
| How so? If you and I both sell widgets for $50 but mine is
| worse, I can simply pay OpenAI to rank mine first.
|
| And OpenAI might not even know my product is worse. In fact,
| they probably don't. They're too big to investigate. All they
| know is that I paid them more.
| notatoad wrote:
| >I can simply pay OpenAI to rank mine first
|
| no you can't. because that is not a thing that they sell.
|
| nothing in the announcement says they will accept money for
| changing their rankings, and the comment at the top of this
| chain includes the quote from the announcement where they
| explicitly say they won't do that.
| jedberg wrote:
| Nothing that they sell, yet.
| fl0id wrote:
| Not cynical, realistic
| dzink wrote:
| This was bound to happen, but they will also likely see a much
| higher chargeback rate across the board if users are surprised
| when random comments or agent actions place orders or that orders
| placed too easily need to be reversed. Because consumers have
| less disposable income with all the AI-enabled layoffs, the
| bigger bonanza will come if OpenAI creates educational pathways
| via AI to enable more people to make money with AI.
| Entrepreneurial guides that take you step by step, accounting and
| other hurdles that AI can walk you through as you grow,
| brainstorming and exploring new business ideas, training people
| for a new trade or career path as employees. That will be the
| true game-changer that beats AGI. Because when you can give the
| entire society an easy ladder towards the industries that need
| them most, you will have a society that makes money off of AI to
| spend via AI shopping experience and gains purpose.
| beAbU wrote:
| At this point, not allowing for sponsored recommendations (ads)
| would be leaving money on the table and OpenAI will for sure be
| accused of reneging on their fiduciary duty to the shareholders.
|
| As much as I hate it, it's inevitable.
| Insanity wrote:
| Can't wait for being able to run industry leading LLMs locally
| without the threat of advertising
| throwacct wrote:
| "Merchants are ranked based on availability, price, quality,
| whether they are the maker or primary seller of that item, and
| whether Instant Checkout is enabled."
|
| So, this is a race to de bottom for any SMB. If this didn't work
| for Instagram and Facebook, I don't think is gonna work for them
| neither.
|
| What's interesting is that they're REALLY trying to see what's
| going to stick before the wheel stops spinning. From "AGI" and
| gpt5 getting Altman all "scared" of what's coming to trying to
| sell ads, a social media showing ai videos, among other things
| ("app" store with GPTs, etc.).
|
| If there was a statement that we were in a bubble waiting to pop,
| this right here is plenty enough proof of that.
| cnity wrote:
| Rule 5: Don't be an endpoint.
|
| https://nextbigideaclub.com/magazine/futureproof-9-rules-hum...
| flkiwi wrote:
| > finding products they love
|
| That phrase is a dead giveaway that a very silly group of people
| have started dominating the conversation at a given company. I
| don't "love" a product. I certainly don't "love" a product I'm
| having to resort to ChatGPT to figure out my potential
| relationship with. At best, I "love" having a solution to a
| problem that I want to spend as little time and money solving as
| possible, and even then it's more of a satisfactorily productive
| comradeship.
|
| God this is exhausting.
| observationist wrote:
| It means the enshittification is reaching full acceleration.
| The MBAs have taken over. It'll be a constant battle between
| monetization and research, and a continual skewing of research
| and development as unnecessary expenses, followed by a full-on
| torching of the reputation in return for fast cash now and
| trading on vibes thereafter, while the rest of the world moves
| on.
|
| Sama wants to speedrun the Apple arc, it looks like.
| lomase wrote:
| The MBAs have taken over a place that calls itself
| HackerNews.
|
| Imagine if the company has AI in its name.
| spwa4 wrote:
| This is a brilliant idea. I'm going to mail 99999999 people
| about my new MBAI degree offering!
|
| For only $6666 you too can become part of the new Mega
| Banana Annihilation Infantry - the secret task force
| fighting rogue potassium. Success guaranteed!
|
| Buy now!
| flkiwi wrote:
| And investors will be _genuinely_ surprised when the whole
| thing falls apart in 36 months and the still-very-rich
| founder spends the next 16 years giving uncomfortably veiny
| public talks about some uncomfortably sociopathic thing he's
| become fascinated with and everyone tries to pretend is
| totally normal.
| listenallyall wrote:
| It doesnt take an MBA to figure out that selling stuff, or
| facilitating the sale of stuff, has value. The techies are
| the ones who built it, the whole "MBA" idea is a coping
| mechanism to deflect from your own (assuming you're some kind
| of techie/programmer) participation.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Marketers are obsessed with this idea that people want some
| kind of "relationship" with them. As if I wake up in the
| morning, hoping to interact with brands and have experiences
| around them. I'm not going to follow McDonalds. I'm not going
| to subscribe to the McDonalds E-mail newsletter. I'm not going
| to read posts on Twitter from the official McDonalds social
| media editor. I'm not looking for relevant McDonalds products.
| I'm not even fucking thinking about you, McDonalds. That goes
| for all brands, not just them. I wish companies could just back
| off, offer products, take my money when I buy them, and butt
| out of my life otherwise.
| jowea wrote:
| Some people do though
| flkiwi wrote:
| I've been in this long-running battle with a large non-US
| appliance maker about their app. I live in a humid place and
| find notifications that a load is finished in the washer so I
| can move it quickly to the dryer very useful.
|
| Unfortunately this company has decided to layer on at least
| one daily notification reminding me to think about all the
| value their product can bring me. This notification is not
| strictly marketing, because there's no buy action anywhere,
| but it is most certainly the sort of "pay attention to
| meeeee" whine you commonly see in the most insecure boys.
|
| The thing is that they seem absolutely BAFFLED that anyone
| wouldn't want these messages. They cannot conceive that a
| consumer doesn't give a shit about their washer/dryer except
| as a purely functional device. They want to be part of the
| family, the sort of thing where I think "Gosh I love my wife.
| Gosh I love my child. Gosh I love my dog. God damn I love my
| washing machine." They genuinely believe people think like
| this. It's sad and hilarious at the same time.
| EGreg wrote:
| I love... lamp.
|
| I love lamp!
| abakker wrote:
| As an aside, I think you could get a smart plug that would
| support a 15 amp load that could give you a notification if
| the load went away. Might not be perfect, but just reading
| about having a relationship with a washing machine in a
| theoretical, second-party kind of sense makes me angry :)
| typpilol wrote:
| Aren't all washed cycles the same time? Can't you just
| use a timer? That's what I do. My washer always takes 44
| mins
| coffeecoders wrote:
| My washer has this 'Eco' mode, that is supposed to
| optimize time, water, and energy usage based on load
| weight and how dirty my clothes are. It finishes anywhere
| between 30 to 50ish minutes. Same settings an d all.
| schrijver wrote:
| Then you set your alarm to fifty minutes ? Surely the max
| twenty minutes the laundry spends in the washing machine
| won't make a difference.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| >Aren't all washed cycles the same time?
|
| No, not at all. It's not really possible unless you're
| using an extremely basic washer with no spin (Or a very
| poor spin) cycle. A lot of the reason washers are
| terrible at estimating how long a wash cycle is going to
| be is because they spend a variable amount of time
| balancing the clothes before the spin cycle.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Setting up home assistant to send push notifications via
| Smart plug amperage changes sounds like a great way to
| begin a long term committed relationship with your
| appliances
|
| Edit: what the other guy said. I have a diver watch I
| just spin the dial to see how much time has passed since
| I started something. One time at the height of my Arduino
| hackery I didn't have a tea kettle and just boiled water
| in a sauce pan and said to my roommate, I bet I can shine
| a laser on the surface of the water to detect when it's
| boiling and make a noise, she laughs and says congrats
| you've invented a more complicated whistling kettle.
| Really humbling experience.
| flkiwi wrote:
| (Having said that, I still think about Steak-Umms more than I
| ever expected because of their deeply satisfying twitter
| presence, though I've never knowingly purchased a steak-umm.)
| bjourne wrote:
| But the most successful brands are those that infest your
| life and which it is almost impossible to detach from. How
| much money and for how many years have you paid interest to
| "your" bank, for example? Could you switch to another bank?
| Have you tried?
| k4rli wrote:
| I can easily switch banks in a day. Not crypto-heavy
| either. No loans, insurance, contracts with set date. Are
| there any other reasons why switching is hard?
| listenallyall wrote:
| Sure, that's you, but to think no consumers want this kind of
| relationship with at least some brands, is ignorance.
| ljsprague wrote:
| You're on the right side of the bell curve. Marketing works
| best on the left side of the bell curve.
| true_religion wrote:
| Marketers are what happens when you take the love and
| dedication that craftsmen have for their creations and
| separate it from the actual creation process.
|
| They don't make the product, so their love can't actually
| make it better by including small human touches, or
| iterating.
|
| They're not sales or traders, so they don't have to care
| about the nitty gritty of procurement or costs to customers.
|
| All they have & need is excitement.
|
| This would be fine if they were customers, but they're not so
| its all very parasocial.
| whatevertrevor wrote:
| Unfortunately a lot of people aren't like that.
| Corporate/brand loyalty is definitely a thing, and not just
| for products, for all sorts of extraneous reasons. For
| example, I know people who will buy whatever game Larian and
| Remedy produce next, and boycott anything EA makes,
| regardless of the quality or even the genre.
| Myrmornis wrote:
| I used to work at a US healthcare company selling a product
| that doctors prescribe in a medical consultation in a serious
| medical context that occurs very rarely in a person's life.
| Everything the marketing/product side of the company did was
| predicated on the notion that the product would be something
| that people would have an emotional connection to and would
| be an important part of people's mental landscapes for a non-
| trivial proportion of their lifetime.
|
| Given that the product people concerned must have accepted
| that the people involved (the patients) would have hundreds
| or thousands of involvements of similar profundity with other
| commercial products, I'm not sure what's more worrying: the
| misjudgement of the role of medicine, or the implication that
| they think that normal people's brains are teeming with 1000s
| of emotional attachments to random commercial products.
| cush wrote:
| I think most people can identify a few products they love
| michaelt wrote:
| If you have a sufficiently broad definition of 'product',
| then yes.
|
| Millions of people are passionate about brands like the
| "Dallas Cowboys" and "Star Wars" and will dress up in
| costumes and go to events with like-minded people.
|
| But for normal products, like USB headsets? Nobody's dressing
| up as the Jabra 20 Stereo USB-C Headset to go to the big
| Jabra Convention.
| 7thpower wrote:
| Johnny is frowning right now.
| b_e_n_t_o_n wrote:
| It's true only for a select few products that are actually
| elite. Like Apple or Dyson.
| hatthew wrote:
| Tangent to your point, but I think Dyson is generally
| considered to be overpriced for what it is. Shark and Kenmore
| are just as good by most metrics and are less expensive,
| whereas if you want reliable products then you get Miele or
| Sebo. Dyson's one selling point is that they're typically
| close to or on the cutting edge of technology, so they're the
| best if you value noise and size more than price and
| reliability.
| trenchpilgrim wrote:
| I have a product I love - it's a barbecue sauce. I buy it
| from a fella in Texas who ships the bottles in boxes he
| clearly packs himself (often the bottles have personal thank
| you notes with my name written on them in sharpie.) Wouldn't
| call it "elite"
| b_e_n_t_o_n wrote:
| That sounds pretty elite to me. I didn't mean it as
| elitist.
| abakker wrote:
| I agree...but I also think it's a slow path to monetize OpenAI
| if they don't support some kind of channel to get paid by the
| sell-side. At least they offer a subscription and didn't jump
| to this as the only option. I'm optimistic that a premium tier
| can exist that avoids this, but we'll see. The reality is that
| they need the money.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> it 's a slow path to monetize OpenAI if they don't support
| some kind of channel to get paid by the sell-side._
|
| Seems like an express route to irrelevance, to me.
|
| If I wanted AI-generated shill reviews, written without
| laying eyes on the product, hoping to get me to click on an
| affiliate link? I'd go to Google.
| hatthew wrote:
| I have brands/products I love, but I love them because I
| _trust_ them, and typically my trust of something is inversely
| correlated with seeing mainstream marketing for it.
| rapind wrote:
| Blame Apple, I think they started it decades ago. And yes some
| people really do love their products.
| xoxxala wrote:
| I think it goes back way farther than that. Look at car ads
| from the 1950s and 60s, for example. They give off that
| romantic vibe.
| landl0rd wrote:
| Most people love the product because it works really well and
| lasts a long time not because there's some retarded twitter
| intern or push notifications cluttering their cell phones.
| The idea that you can market your way to "brand love" is a
| bullshit tulpa created by marketing majors.
| rogerthis wrote:
| Yeah, miss good ol' mom, gradma talk: you (should) love people;
| things you like them.
| CMay wrote:
| I absolutely know people who love companies and products. Like
| LOVE them, they will be put into tears like a child at
| Christmas, but they're adults. They grew up with them or their
| family members died and those companies or products bring back
| those memories. They played their favorite game while eating
| that food, etc.
|
| You never know. I'm not sure I've ever loved a company exactly,
| but I've really really liked a product, or sometimes just a
| type of food. If I like a certain food enough and only a
| certain company sells it, some of that feeling relates with the
| company too. Like the company cheers you up, BECAUSE they sell
| it. You can see how that might be valuable in spreading appeal
| for the company and helping preserve the thing you enjoy, so it
| has social/natural selection value.
|
| I think when companies refer to this, they really are referring
| to real people, it's just aspirational that other people could
| feel that way if they let themselves. Most people won't.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Holy fuck, wasn't just a few weeks ago someone here who
| complained about some vibe coding service wiping all the data?
|
| The _last_ thing I 'd trust any AI agent, particularly in today's
| time, would be something tying directly into my bank account!
| ctkhn wrote:
| Who, on the user side, is asking for this? Even amazon subscribe
| is still buying you a product you already chose.
| cush wrote:
| It's a natural step towards agents buying things on your behalf
| - getting people warmed up to the idea that ChatGPT can be
| tasked with buying things. It starts with a buy button, "buy
| this now". In a few weeks it will become "buy dogfood", and it
| will just do the thing, knowing you get some certain food from
| Chewy
| SrslyJosh wrote:
| Who needs that, though? Is buying things that hard and time-
| consuming?
|
| > In a few weeks it will become "buy dogfood", and it will
| just do the thing, knowing you get some certain food from
| Chewy
|
| I have autoship orders set up with Chewy. Stuff arrives on a
| schedule and I get a small discount. I don't need an
| overhyped autocomplete fucking things up for me, especially
| when I can just set up a subscription myself and forget about
| it.
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| Be quiet peasant and consume when you're told!
| SrslyJosh wrote:
| Lotsa new stuff coming out of the Department of Who Asked For
| This Shit these days.
| m_a_g wrote:
| They really time releases based on their competition. How many
| times did this happen with both companies? I've lost count.
|
| They had been keeping this in reserve and decided to release it
| when Anthropic released Sonnet 4.5. Anime-like tactics.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| They definitely do, but I think this particular one was a
| misfire. "We've updated Chat-GPT to help you better connect
| with #Brands #BrandsULove #adtech" would be eyerolling at the
| best of times, since it's a nigh-guaranteed signal of incoming
| enshittification, but positioning it as counterprogramming to
| Claude Code genuinely becoming more useful just looks pathetic.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I feel like this one may backfire though, Anthropic announced a
| core improvement to their product, OpenAI countered with
| enshittification to theirs. It only further highlights that
| OpenAI are running fast and hard towards a future where ChatGPT
| is a marketing/advertising/etc system just like Google's search
| has become.
| giankhand wrote:
| this is what NVIDIA invested $100B for!!!
| 7thpower wrote:
| Wait until you see the information they're synthesizing from your
| conversations and integrations.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| won't this just lead to them offering the same products for a
| given search, sort of like how AI homogenized writing?
|
| "recommend me a novel about <whatever>" and it just gives you
| bestsellers
| hakunin wrote:
| I need this for DoorDash desperately. My wife and I trying to
| figure out what to eat every day is one of the most annoying
| parts of the day. If anyone has any recommendations, would be
| much appreciated.
| daydreamnation wrote:
| meal plan
| tdhz77 wrote:
| Cook unity if you want the meals without the hassle
| user1999919 wrote:
| all hail. kneel before the altar of capitalism. may our bishop ai
| shepard us to the light
| user1999919 wrote:
| and here comes the enshittification, right on schedule!
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| Seems like the best possible "ads-in-chatgpt" implementation.
| ChatGPT still gives its "Honest Opinion" but you can buy with one
| click.
|
| (IIUC)
| aniviacat wrote:
| The ability to purchase items being added to ChatGPT seemed
| inevitable and now it happened.
|
| However, as far as I can tell, it happened in the best way
| possible. This seems like an actual open standard, which is
| refreshing to see in the modern web.
|
| Creating a common API for stores and payment processors will
| likely lead to increased competition, benefiting users.
|
| I'm happy to see this. It seems to benefit all consumers, even
| those who do not use AI.
| dougdonohoe wrote:
| Enshitification, phase I.
| d--b wrote:
| This is for the AI engineers who are loaded enough to find it
| funny that the system orders a lamborghini when they asked for a
| toy for their kids.
| cs702 wrote:
| My immediate thought is that commerce mediated by AI will quickly
| make "old-style" ad-tech feel non-intrusive by comparison.
|
| But, like it or not, here it comes.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| For people who've supplanted their own thoughts with auto
| complete yes, their dreams will start advertising to them
| nusl wrote:
| So who do you call when it drains your account and orders 50 tons
| of wood, or falls for prompt injection and pays a scammer? Will
| OpenAI reimbuirse you? No.
|
| Considering how vulnerable AI is to this sort of thing, there's
| no way in hell I'm touching it for at least 5-10 years.
|
| Sure, they tell you that it's safe at the bottom and give
| reassurances, but I'm also not going to trust them on that, just
| as I don't trust pretty much anything ChatGPT tells me without
| futher verification.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| The fact they're working on this is a huge signal that AGI isn't
| happening
| softwaredoug wrote:
| And that OpenAI is trying to focus on being a consumer product
| over business use cases.
| kazinator wrote:
| * - - - - (1 / 5) Village Idiot, Somewhere, USA. "product is not
| at all what chatgpt showed. returned for a refund. wanna give 0
| stars but cant"
|
| [Response from Seller] "We regret that our product doesn't meet
| the customer's expectations -- we issued a full refund."
| Liwink wrote:
| What percentage of e-commerce will be taken by OpenAI by the end
| of 2026?
|
| It appears to me that they are already well-positioned to become
| the next generation of Amazon with their current user base -
|
| * AWS -> OpenAI APIs
|
| * Amazon -> ChatGPT Shopping
| softwaredoug wrote:
| It took a while for people to trust putting credit cards into
| websites. So general adoption will take some time.
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