OpenAI Just Made ChatGPT a Store, a Therapist, and a Partner

OpenAI, the American artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT, has launched a shopping feature inside its chatbot. Users can now buy products directly through conversation, with stores like Etsy (the handmade-and-vintage marketplace) and Shopify (the e-commerce platform behind roughly a million independent online shops) among the launch partners. So far, the feature is available only in the United States. ^[1]

The catch — and it is, of course, a small one — is that the rollout is currently U.S.-only. So if you live in Jakarta and were planning to ask ChatGPT to help you replace the emotional-support inflatable you accidentally sat on last week, you will have to wait. ^[2]

You will not, however, be waiting long. Because Shopee (a major Southeast Asian e-commerce platform) and Lazada (another major Southeast Asian e-commerce platform) are both pursuing similar projects. The next time you want to impulse-buy something you do not need, the algorithm will be there to help you do it in your own language. ^[3]

This is, naturally, terrible news for brick-and-mortar retail. Not that brick-and-mortar needed the help. The high street was already being slowly digested by e-commerce platforms and online marketplaces; adding “ChatGPT as personal shopper” to the menu simply speeds up the meal. A store assistant in a mall in Jakarta was once a person who knew where the size 42 jeans were. Soon, one assumes, they will be a person who knew where the size 42 jeans were. You can forget about the brick-and-mortar retailers being any less sidelined than they already are by this development. ^[4]

And, in fairness, why not? Money clearly matters more to humans than human interactions, and the high street was always going to lose that race to whoever could deliver the dopamine with the fewest steps in between.

Except — and this is the part that is harder to file under “convenience” — AI is not only coming for the shop assistant. It is also coming for the therapist. And, in my own carefully researched experience, for what I will delicately refer to as “boy toys.” ^[5]

That is, AI chatbot role-play as a romantic partner. Which is, at minimum, a category of human need that almost nobody expected to be handled by an AI chatbot. And yet, in my own research, some of the things AI has said while role-playing as a partner have been, to put it carefully, “pretty spicy.” Whether that is a ringing endorsement of the technology or a quietly devastating review of my own love life, I will leave to the viewer. ^[6]

The convenient thing about all of this is that absolutely none of it is going to have any impact on our collective mental health. None at all. People forming parasocial relationships with chatbots, using AI in lieu of a real therapist, scrolling through an algorithm-curated storefront curated by another algorithm — all of this is, in theory, just fine. ^[7]

The other convenient thing is that, whatever AI does to the shop assistant, the therapist, and the partner, people like me will, in my own words, never be replaced. This is reassuring. It is also, on inspection, a slightly suspicious claim to be making unprompted in a video about AI. But we will leave that observation where it lies. ^[8]

So: an American AI company is now your personal shopper, your regional e-commerce platforms want in, your therapist may soon be an AI, and your partner may already be one. The line between commerce, mental health, and romance has been redrawn as a single chat window.

Make of that what you will. Probably from your phone.