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Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

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Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#151

Post by s3r3nity »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #131
darthoctopus wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don't want to put in the human time and effort to do so In most circles, that is "not that interested in getting good at it".

Maybe in yours? Someone can want a thing, even very badly, without wanting to put in the work for it. Conversely, someone can work very hard for something they do not want. The linkage between wanting a thing and wanting to do the work to get it is not absolute, or necessary there at all.

Did they stop teaching "actions speak louder than words" in schools, or something?

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#152

Post by fc417fc802 »

mrbungie wrote: post #141
fc417fc802 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his reasoning was pretty clearly presented as not the goodness of their heart but rather the medium to long term predicted outcome on their bottom line. Ultimately failing or getting tangled up with regulators any more than necessary is to be avoided. If you move too early and it chases people away from your platform which undermines your ability to keep innovating then a competitor who held back will ultimat…

But then there is no safe way for them to "mortally wound" the software industry. The full argument is moot. I would add there are more reasons why this wouldn't work: costs due to OOM more usage, adoption/AI backlash, adversarial environment, players with big head starts (Google).

Yes, I believe the original commenter made that exact point.

You don't need to personally win in order to mortally wound someone. It can be informative to speculate about whether or not something is possible regardless of it being strategically advisable in the current context.

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#153

Post by Kuyawa »

Where everybody sees failure I see a trillion dollar business, a faceless ai shop that merges all shops around your location.

"I need mayo, ketchup, mustard and ground beef"

"Here is a list of products with prices ... proceed to pay $25 (yes/no)" Yes

"Your card has been charged. Delivery will knock on your door in 7 minutes"

I'll code that app in one month, what's there to lose?

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#154

Post by cdelsolar »

y-curious wrote: post #124
holografix wrote: post #102

Wow the sceptics really came out in force for this one. I’m currently using Gemini to research components for a remote controlled plane. I have the frame of the plane and now need to buy correctly specced servo motors, an engine, battery, etc etc. It has saved me so much time and educated me tremendously on how the different components interact and the options available. If I could just press “buy” from within Gemini…

The entire point of shoehorning AI into everything is to make people stop thinking for themselves and allowing a corporation to do it for them. “””If I could just press “buy” from within Gemini and pay via Google Pay (or better still, Apple Pay) I’d do it in a heartbeat””” Yeah, until that becomes enshittified and you don’t notice because you no longer do research on components.

so what, i want to build a little remote controlled plane that works

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#155

Post by AStrangeMorrow »

boringg wrote: post #132
janalsncm wrote: post #15

This is from one of the links in the article > Why this is happening. Two forces are slowing agentic commerce, according to Leigh McKenzie, director of online visibility at Semrush: infrastructure and trust. Real-time catalog normalization across tens of millions of SKUs is a decade-scale problem Google already solved with Merchant Center, and consumers still default to checkout flows they trust — Apple Pay, Google W…

30 years? E-commerce hasn't been around that long - try 5 years of optimization MAX. FWIW OpenAI is desperately trying to monetize and they think e-commerce is a "simple" problem to solve. I mean they do need to convert their funnel without alienating their users. I assume they are going to have some big payouts for agentic purchases gone awry or leave merchants on the hook.

I remember having to describe a standard model to predict online shopping behaviors for my ML class exam in university. That was close to 10 years ago now.

Also remember a teacher telling us about that story of a company finding a woman was pregnant from her shopping behavior and pushing relevant recommendation. Prompting people around her like her dad or something to find out she was pregnant

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#156

Post by porridgeraisin »

TitaRusell wrote: post #84
janalsncm wrote: post #15

This is from one of the links in the article > Why this is happening. Two forces are slowing agentic commerce, according to Leigh McKenzie, director of online visibility at Semrush: infrastructure and trust. Real-time catalog normalization across tens of millions of SKUs is a decade-scale problem Google already solved with Merchant Center, and consumers still default to checkout flows they trust — Apple Pay, Google W…

What the hell would AI even bring to the table here? Already your favourite e commerce site has all your data. You can switch on the "buy this automatically" feature.

More targeted ads.

Today, ads are based on user information you can reasonably collect from the users historical actions on your website, and then whatever search term they enter.

But soon, ads can be based on your current chat context + (derived interests of yours from your entire chat history across all chats. Shhhh.) passed in full to the e-commerce website that will use it to choose ads, generates creatives on the fly, all that crap, hyper-specific to you.

I'm so excited. Aren't you?

Now, as a side effect, searching through these can become better experience wise as well. They can use all that context and genuinely surface fewer, better results. But that's not the motivation of the e-commerce player anyways. If the ads work they'll be happy.

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#157

Post by porridgeraisin »

Kuyawa wrote: post #153

Where everybody sees failure I see a trillion dollar business, a faceless ai shop that merges all shops around your location. "I need mayo, ketchup, mustard and ground beef" "Here is a list of products with prices ... proceed to pay $25 (yes/no)" Yes "Your card has been charged. Delivery will knock on your door in 7 minutes" I'll code that app in one month, what's there to lose?

This exists in india already

The food delivery apps (zomato, Swiggy) support "agentic shopping" through an MCP server.

You can reserve a small amount of money in UPI apps that doesn't need any approval to be debited (only by a specific merchant).

Razorpay which is a payment gateway has an MCP server

So you can add razorpay in your app, and claude can pay.

Claude can access the Swiggy MCP server and search using natural language there.

The incentive for the food delivery app to participate in this is better targeted ads.

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#158

Post by infamous-oven »

darthoctopus wrote: post #70
petcat wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not that interested in getting good at it I think they're interested in getting good at it. They just don't want to put in the human time and effort to do so. They expect their many failures and short-comings to be shored up by continuous model training. But that, of course, means that in the meantime it will suck and nobody will use it.

> don't want to put in the human time and effort to do so In most circles, that is "not that interested in getting good at it".

It's really hard to be a generalist and better than all the specialists at everything. OpenAI wants to focus on the G in AGI, and optimizing for ecommerce is just not that interesting to them, so of course it can't compete with Walmart.

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#159

Post by dylan604 »

s3r3nity wrote: post #151
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe in yours? Someone can want a thing, even very badly, without wanting to put in the work for it. Conversely, someone can work very hard for something they do not want. The linkage between wanting a thing and wanting to do the work to get it is not absolute, or necessary there at all.

Did they stop teaching "actions speak louder than words" in schools, or something?

"Someone can want a thing, even very badly, without wanting to put in the work for it."

Pretty much the impetus behind a lot of theft. Sure, there's thieving because people can't afford food, but that's all theft. There's theft because they are addicts and don't want to sober up long enough to earn money, so they still things. There's others that can't afford something so rather than saving for it, they just take it.

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#160

Post by WarmWash »

y-curious wrote: post #124
holografix wrote: post #102

Wow the sceptics really came out in force for this one. I’m currently using Gemini to research components for a remote controlled plane. I have the frame of the plane and now need to buy correctly specced servo motors, an engine, battery, etc etc. It has saved me so much time and educated me tremendously on how the different components interact and the options available. If I could just press “buy” from within Gemini…

The entire point of shoehorning AI into everything is to make people stop thinking for themselves and allowing a corporation to do it for them. “””If I could just press “buy” from within Gemini and pay via Google Pay (or better still, Apple Pay) I’d do it in a heartbeat””” Yeah, until that becomes enshittified and you don’t notice because you no longer do research on components.

>...is to make people stop thinking for themselves and allowing a corporation to do it for them.

Insert that "always has been" meme.

Microsoft was brought to court in the 90's for shoehorning in Internet Explorer.

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