Breaking: ChatGPT launches AI sales agents and business profiles

Good afternoon.

A quick special edition of The Aisle today with some breaking news from OpenAI. I'll be back tomorrow with our regular weekly edition.

A lot of retailers and brands stress over getting discovered more often in ChatGPT. OpenAI is now giving them a more direct way to participate.

The company announced a new initiative Tuesday called Businesses in ChatGPT, which will let businesses both create and claim their profiles in the chatbot and provide more information about what products or services they sell. Some will also be able to build their own AI agents inside ChatGPT to interact directly with potential customers.

During a press briefing Monday, Benji Shomair, OpenAI's commerce chief, walked me and a handful of other reporters through a demonstration involving a fictional toy retailer called Colorful Clatter.

The setup was straightforward enough. ChatGPT’s core chat itself recommended the store to a user looking for creative toys for kids. From there, the shopper could pull up the retailer's business profile and see some of its products.

Shomair then switched to an interface where the retailer could create its own AI agent. Businesses can give their agents instructions on how to interact with customers and provide additional context about their offerings. In the demo, a shopper could start a separate conversation with Colorful Clatter's agent, which recommended toys and displayed a drawing kit with an "Add to cart" button.

Purchases currently take place on merchants' websites, consistent with OpenAI's decision earlier this year to shift its shopping efforts toward product discovery.

The new business agents are initially available to eligible U.S. e-commerce and online services companies.

I was also curious whether larger retailers that are already building more sophisticated ChatGPT plugins would have much use for these new agents. OpenAI spokesperson Will Stickney told me the distinction comes down to what a business wants to accomplish. Business Agents are designed to handle customer questions about a company's offerings, while plugins can support more customized experiences within ChatGPT. Stickney acknowledged that the initial version of Business Agents is geared more toward small and midsize businesses, though he expects that could change.

The broader initiative is launching globally in beta. Through Business Hub, companies that complete OpenAI's verification process can take control of their business listings in ChatGPT and supply up-to-date product information. Shopify merchants can handle the setup from their existing Shopify admin dashboard.

The initial analytics are pretty basic. Businesses can see how often ChatGPT brings them up in conversations and how much traffic it sends to their websites. They'll also get a sense of the topics associated with those appearances. Individual conversations will remain private, and OpenAI won't provide aggregate data unless there's a certain amount of activity. The dashboard also won't connect website clicks to actual purchases. Retailers will need their own analytics for that.

As I watched the short demo yesterday, I thought mostly about the questions it might raise about consumer trust. The way I think about it, many consumers have come to view ChatGPT and other AI chatbots, rightly or wrongly, as relatively independent sources of product advice. So what happens when OpenAI starts directing those same consumers into conversations with AI agents working on behalf of businesses trying to sell them something?

Shomair emphasized to me that conversations with business agents are clearly labeled and take place in a separate thread from a user's regular ChatGPT conversation. The interface looks different, too. OpenAI, he said, wants consumers to understand when they're getting advice from ChatGPT versus speaking directly with a business.

But I also wondered whether claiming a business profile or launching a dedicated agent within ChatGPT would affect how often a company gets recommended in regular ChatGPT conversations. Shomair said there's no direct connection. But he acknowledged that providing better information about a business could help ChatGPT surface it in more relevant situations.

I wanted to understand that distinction a little better, so I followed up with OpenAI's communications team about it later on. Stickney told me that uploading a product catalog gives ChatGPT another source of information to draw from, particularly for details that change frequently, such as price and availability. But ChatGPT can still consult the broader web, and providing a catalog doesn't guarantee that a product will be recommended.

This feels to me like a distinction worth keeping an eye on, especially given the growing number of startups and SEO incumbents promising to help retailers improve their visibility in AI search results.

There's also some history worth noting here. OpenAI introduced Sponsored Agents in September, allowing consumers who click advertisements in ChatGPT to start conversations with the businesses behind them. That product is still in a limited beta. Shomair said Monday that the new Business Agents use the same underlying technology. The difference is that consumers will now be able to engage with them without clicking a paid advertisement. The new business tools are free for now.

One other detail caught my attention. Before joining OpenAI, Shomair spent more than a decade at Meta, where he helped build its commerce businesses across Facebook and Instagram. And some of what OpenAI is building should sound familiar to anyone who has followed Meta's evolution. Advertising is already becoming part of the equation too.

ChatGPT is starting to look a lot more like a business platform. But again, a critical challenge ahead is that the same company that wants consumers to trust ChatGPT's product advice also wants to give businesses more ways to influence how they're discovered and how they engage with those shoppers.

Can you keep both sides happy over the long term?