ChatGPT handles over 1 billion web searches every week and has 400 million weekly users. About 64% of people are likely to buy products based on its suggestions and 67% say it understands them better than other shopping chatbots. Easy to see why ChatGPT wants to be your shopping assistant now.
OpenAI’s widely used AI chatbot now includes smart shopping features with personalised product suggestions. Think of it as a no-nonsense, AI-powered guide that cuts the sales pitch for laser-sharp recommendations. Just ask what you want: “A laptop under `80,000 to prepare YouTube videos”. Or “A makeup tutorial for Korean glass-skin”. And it serves up curated,
context-aware recommendations pulled from sources like Shopify and other retail integrations. As things stand, it throws up images, reviews and direct buying links for fashion, electronics and home goods without ads or paid promotions.
The ChatGPT upgrade comes at a time when social commerce is growing in leaps and bounds. According to a Bain & Company, social commerce in India (in terms of gross merchandise value) is projected to reach $16-20 billion by 2025 and $60-70 billion by 2030. “More and more companies are adopting AI-driven solutions for marketing,” says Chandan Sharma, general manager, Adani Group. “Brands are using chatbots to interact with customers suggest products and even streamline the buying process. Some companies are also working on ways to manage how their brand appears in chatbot conversations ensuring they stay visible in AI-generated content.”
The opportunity
Experts see ChatGPT’s shopping features a serious upgrade to social commerce as we know it today — from a chatbot to a personal shopping assistant that actually gets the job done. “ChatGPT is giving control back to the consumer,” says Abhilash Madabhushi, founder, Consuma AI. “The traditional funnel of awareness to consideration to conversion gets compressed. The buyer comes in solution-aware and moves straight to evaluating options.”
This makes it different from the others. For one, take Google Shopping. It is focused more on keywords, while at ChatGPT, users get results tailored to their preferences. “This enhances the overall value of the GPT model,” says Saloni Jain, cofounder, Plus91Labs.
Another key difference is that the user gets organic results rather than sponsored products, assuring a more personalised experience. “It collapses the traditional browsing funnel into a single, interactive moment. The user has a structured conversation that drives towards a decision,”says Aabhinna Suresh Khare, chief digital & marketing officer, BajajCapital.
For D2C brands and smaller players, this is a real opportunity. If your product matches the user’s query regarding price, quality, and intent, it shows up. You don’t need a massive ad spend to compete. Legacy brands no longer own default visibility. Discovery becomes meritocratic.
The challenges
But here’s the kicker: AI now sits between the product and the customer. And that changes everything for marketers. If your product information isn’t sharp, your reviews aren’t clean, or your brand isn’t well-represented in the right data pipelines, you’re out of contention. “If your brand isn’t structured to show up when the AI is filtering for relevance, you’re invisible,” says Sindhu Biswal, CEO & founder, Buzzlab. The upshot? SEO won’t be enough; paid media won’t cut it. Brands will need to optimise for AI surfaces the same way they once optimised for Google search. “It poses a massive challenge, and not the kind marketers can ignore,”adds Biswal. “It’s not about bidding for space anymore, it’s about earning a place in the AI’s logic. And that’s a whole new battleground.”
Marketers must also consider the broader impact of AI intermediaries on brand building. “If consumers rely on AI recommendations, will brand recall and loyalty become harder to achieve?” asks Vishal Adkar, associate VP, Avalon Consulting.
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Another point to consider—though not a challenge—is the way marketers allocate budgets across channels, each with its own performance metric. With AI chatbots introducing a new shopping medium, there could be ad spend fragmentation over time if a significant portion of customer interactions shifts to this channel, points out Siddhyesh Narkar, chief technology officer, Wondrlab.
Experts also say if AI becomes the first place the consumer goes to ask what to buy or where to buy, Google’s dominance as the default discovery engine might start to crack. Google, Amazon, and Meta know this. That’s why we are seeing AI being rapidly baked into everything, from Search Generative Experience to conversational shopping in Messenger and Amazon’s AI buying guides.
