Walmart’s next move in AI e-commerce is a partnership with OpenAI that lets customers shop directly through ChatGPT, using its new “Instant Checkout” feature. Instead of typing into a search bar and scrolling endlessly, shoppers can simply ask for meal ideas or restock the pantry with a few lines of chat—and ChatGPT does the rest. Walmart calls it “agentic commerce,” a buzzword-heavy way of saying the AI is not waiting, it’s doing. It’s a significant expansion of the conversational commerce Walmart kicked off with its Sparky assistant earlier this year.
Sparky’s still around, now one link in a larger AI strategy. While only 15% of shoppers have interacted with Sparky, 70% say they’ve used at least one AI shopping tool—most commonly ChatGPT. That presents Walmart with a clear advantage: they’re going where the users are instead of forcing adoption inside a walled garden. And with 200+ million ChatGPT users globally, that’s a lot of cart-filling potential. Analysts from Jefferies and UBS are bullish, citing reduced friction, better personalization, and a shot at increased share of wallet.
Still, hurdles remain. Privacy concerns, checkout reliability, and shopper behavior shifts are all part of the challenge. AI can handle a grocery list, but will chat-based UX nudge us into big-ticket impulse buys without a browse-and-click journey? Walmart’s hedging its bets: building its own ecosystem of AI assistants while integrating with major third-party platforms. As one observer said, don’t just market to customers anymore—start marketing to the algorithm, too.
Read more at Retail Wire.