Are Retail Apps Within ChatGPT and Claude in Trouble, Or Is it Too Early To Tell?

With OpenAI having discontinued (or scaled back, depending upon who you ask) its much-vaunted Instant Checkout feature in March — in favor of moving the purchase journey through retailer-specific app, instead of the general ChatGPT platform itself, the future of agentic AI experiences tied to consumer buys appears to remain in flux.

The new paradigm? ChatGPT apps and Claude “connectors,” which are essentially the same thing under a different name. Retailers can, and are, creating their own apps for shopper use, leaving discovery up to the AI platform and handling checkout through their own connected app. As Modern Retail’s Mitchell Parton pointed out, even though a full 10% of all apps on ChatGPT are shopping-oriented, including those from Target and Walmart, conversion rates may not be as rosy.

Parton quoted Alpic chief of staff Dimitri Ewald on that subject. Ewald’s company, which builds and distributes apps for both of the aforementioned AI platforms, says conversations with clients have been revealing.

“For the moment, to be honest, adoption and conversion are pretty low. People don’t even know that there are apps in the ChatGPT store,” Ewald said.

And the low conversion rates may not be news to those following the previous Instant Checkout functionality, either.

“Several people involved with Instant Checkout told Modern Retail and other outlets that the program didn’t drive sales and that some merchants didn’t want OpenAI overseeing the checkout process,” Parton wrote.

Retail Apps May Require Evolution Before Hype Matches Promise (If it Ever Does)

Ewald wasn’t the only expert cited by Parton who was taking a wait-and-see approach to the current environment regarding AI sales funnels. Jason Goldberg, chief commerce strategy officer for Publicis Groupe, took a middle-of-the-road stance, pointing to the potential for evolution versus the existing status quo.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a retailer or brand doing an app, and I think there are benefits to be had; there are learnings to be had, and data to be collected, and muscle memory to be built by brands and retailers doing it. I wouldn’t discourage someone from doing it. I don’t think it’s economically very exciting or material. In the long run, unless it evolves dramatically, I don’t think it’s going to be an important part of the agentic commerce ecosystem,” Goldberg said.

“I would not say, ‘Apps are never going to work, and they’re dead.’ What I would say is, if they do work and they’re important to shoppers, they’ll probably look pretty different than the ones we have today,” he added.

The reasons provided for retailers and brands clambering for AI partnerships and integrations were many — from FOMO to wanting to set anchors in early in hopes that the situation would improve. Or, simply to control the information being put in front of shoppers as AI adoption improves, both on the consumer side and on the corporate side.

Other problems are in evidence as well, according to both brands and retailers as well as OpenAI itself. Issues surrounding app approval (and attendant red tape), bugs in the code, and a dearth of usage data are mixed with a general anxiety about handing off customer information to the models.

For its part, OpenAI remains optimistic about ironing these problems out as things move forward.

“We’re still early in building this out, and we recognize there are areas where the developer experience needs to improve,” a spokesperson said, indicating that the company aims to make ChatGPT “more reliable, more predictable and easier to build on over time.”

ChatGPT, Claude: A Useful ‘Low-Cost Focus Group’ or Merely ‘Experiments To Drive Press Releases’ for Brands and Retailers?

Goldberg would go on to describe that the learning value attached to experimentation within the agentic AI ecosystem could be valuable to retailers, one which could translate to greater leverage.

“You could think of launching a retail app on ChatGPT as a low-expense focus group that you can then use to improve the agents you might build for your own vertical website,” he said.

But Juozas Kaziukėnas, an independent e-commerce analyst, was much more critical, making comparisons between AI app launches and the eventually disastrous NFT launches which now constitute more of a memory than a lasting store of value — a popularity contest, then, rather than a lasting marker.

“There’s no visible success story of any of these apps being a meaningful driver for any of these companies. We can theorize how useful these apps could be or can’t be, but I think, for now, it’s quite clear they’re just experiments meant to drive press releases and don’t really impact anything at all,” he said.