Walmart announced on Tuesday a new partnership with OpenAI that will allow consumers to shop Walmart’s products via the AI chatbot, including things like groceries (not fresh food), household essentials, and more, and then instantly check out.
The agentic shopping feature will also allow Sam’s Club members to plan meals and restock essentials while also discovering new items when chatting with the AI, the company says.
To use the feature, customers will press a “buy” button in ChatGPT’s app when they shop, after linking their Walmart accounts to ChatGPT. Products from third-party sellers will also be supported when the feature rolls out later this fall.
Walmart explains that the new agreement with OpenAI will allow the retailer to better learn and predict customers’ needs, making online shopping more personalized and proactive, instead of only reactive.
The partnership follows OpenAI’s recent announcement of its plan to enter the world of e-commerce with an agentic shopping system, which includes product discovery, recommendation, and payments. Initially, OpenAI is teaming up with Etsy and Shopify sellers, the company said.
The ChatGPT-focused shopping feature won’t be the only way consumers can shop with AI. Alongside other AI investments, Walmart recently introduced its own generative AI shopping assistant, Sparky, designed to help customers discover and compare products and make purchases. The feature will expand to include reordering, service booking, and understanding multimodal inputs from text, images, audio, and video.
The retailer has an existing relationship with OpenAI in other areas of its business, as well, having adopted OpenAI Certifications and ChatGPT Enterprise for its internal teams. Both Walmart and Sam’s Club broadly use AI to do other things, like speeding up fashion production by up to 18 weeks and improving customer care time frames by up to 40%.
“For many years now, e-commerce shopping experiences have consisted of a search bar and a long list of item responses. That is about to change,” noted Walmart President and CEO Doug McMillon in a prepared statement. “There is a native AI experience coming that is multimedia, personalized, and contextual. We are running towards that more enjoyable and convenient future with Sparky and through partnerships, including this important step with OpenAI,” he added.
