@tjrobertson52

Looks like we're about to see a big shift in the way people find and buy products online. Just in the last 24 hours, both OpenAI and Google announced their plan to become the leader in AI shopping. So I wanna talk about those announcements, what this will mean for e commerce businesses, and then my thoughts on how this might roll out to other industries as well.

So let's start with OpenAI. They just announced a partnership with Spotify and Etsy. Or you can find and buy products directly from ChatGPT.

Now, we don't know exactly how this works yet, but it looks like if you sell products on a Shopify or Etsy store, people will be able to find you directly in ChatGPT and then buy from their platform without even leaving ChatGPT. And you just have to agree to give ChatGPT 2% of that sale as a referral fee.

Google, on the other hand, is not yet letting you buy directly from their platform, but their AI mode has been overhauled to prioritise visual results, and this has mainly been done to improve the experience of shopping through Google. It's very clear that both of these platforms are racing to become the default operating system of the internet, and shopping is just a logical place to start. So if you're an e commerce business, you should be paying close attention to this.

ChatGPT is starting with Shopify and Etsy, but they've also open sourced the API so that any merchant can use this. So even if you're on WooCommerce or BigCommerce, you should be able to get in on the action for Google. Just make sure you're connected to Google Merchant Center and following best practices for product structure data.

This actually feels like the first change that could significantly take some market share away from Amazon. And again, e commerce is the logical place to start. But the trend is clear.

OpenAI and Google are trying to keep people on their platform. They want to become the operating system of the internet. If things keep moving in this direction, people are gonna spend less and less time visiting actual websites or using discrete tools.

And we'll instead be doing more and more directly through platforms like ChatGPT or Google's AI mode. We could be moving very quickly into a world where recommendations from AI will make or break your business.