Consumer confidence fell again in September, hitting a five-month low as concerns about the job market increased, according to data from The Conference Board. That means retailers and online platforms are going to be doing everything they can to attract shoppers.

We can add OpenAI to that list: The creator of ChatGPT is betting that consumers will feel confident making purchases via chatbot. OpenAI is rolling out a new Instant Checkout feature for some items on Etsy and with Shopify merchants like Skims, Glossier and Vuori coming soon.

Paid and free users of ChatGPT can hit the buy button for single purchases without navigating out of the chat. OpenAI says it’s a first step toward “agentic” commerce, where AI could eventually shop for us, though humans are still in the driver’s seat in this iteration.

Greg Zakowicz is in the market for a cappuccino maker, but not just any cappuccino maker.

“So yesterday, I got on ChatGPT, and I'm like, ‘So, give me a cappuccino maker under $300 that has, you know, minimal plastic internal components,’ and I just do this quick thing, and I get my results,” Zakowicz said.

Zakowicz is a senior ecommerce expert at marketing platform Omnisend, which found that — just like him — almost 60% of consumers are now using chatbots to shop online.

“They're still doing the search like they always would, but they're replacing Google with chatGPT or Claude, or whatever they're using,” Zakowicz said

He said consumers increasingly trust chatbot product recommendations more than Google search. AI can summarize reviews and narrow down results to a few key options with minimal instructions.

So why not let the bot handle the purchase too?

“This happens over and over and over again,” said Sucharita Kodali, an e-commerce analyst at Forrester. “Every large tech company goes through this cycle where they think we're going to own commerce now.”

Meta, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok and Google have all tried to bring shopping transactions directly onto their platforms, with mixed results.

One perennial challenge is getting retailers to give up their direct link to consumers said analyst Andrew Lipsman with Media, Ads + Commerce. 

“Retailers will want to keep their own data closer to the vest,” Lipsman said. “They'll want to drive traffic through the front door of their site, and so they have less reason to participate.”

Because that data on purchases is valuable for advertising, said analyst Eric Seufert at Mobile Dev Memo.

“You need to know what people have bought recently and what people have searched for recently and without that data you can’t do proper targeting,” Seufert said.

Which he said may give a hint as to why so many tech companies have tried this approach. 

“My sense is OpenAI can make a lot of money with ads,” Seufert said. ““They just need to do it in a way that doesn't sit at odds or doesn't feel hostile to the core product experience.”

OpenAI said it will receive a small fee from participating merchants. But products available for Instant Checkout won’t be favored in the list of results.