This Christmas, ChatGPT has replaced the salesperson

For years, retailers have fought to win the homepage, the search bar, and the algorithm. Now a gatekeeper has entered the chat… literally. OpenAI’s new ChatGPT shopping Assistant turns product discovery into a conversation, and overnight, the path to purchase belongs to whoever the AI recommends.  

 The tool lets shoppers type a request like “What’s the best moisturiser for sensitive skin?” or “Find me a TV under $2,000 that arrives within a week” and ChatGPT produces a personalised shortlist sourced from across the internet. It combines product details, comparisons, retailer citations and reasoning into a single conversational exchange. 

It launched globally right at the time of the Christmas rush, and it means for the first time, customers no longer need to browse, search, scroll or compare. They simply ask – and the AI decides what makes the cut.  

This is not another browsing tool. It’s a decision maker – one that collapses the entire purchase journey into a single conversation, and its arrival marks one of the biggest behavioural shifts e-commerce has ever seen.