Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

Post by GolfPopper » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 4:08 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #61

latexr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But a dreamer in me entertains another idea: perhaps they're just holding back, because they realize that actually succeeding at this will instantly kill (or at least mortally wound) e-commerce as we know it. Sam Altman doesn’t give a shit about anyone but himself and has time and again shown he has no restraint for trampling over others to further his own goals. Why would e-commerce be where he draws the line?

I don't think there is any line drawn here. I think if they executed well (and by they I mean any one of the three SOTA LLM vendors), they could already mortally wound the entire software industry today. Whether or not they want, or will want, to do it at some point, is unknown; the reasons to not do it now are obvious: 1) it's more profitable to keep renting intelligence per token to everyone, preserving the status…

Post by danso » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 4:19 PM UTC

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.

Post by DANmode » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 4:23 PM UTC

netsharc wrote: post #37

zmmmmm wrote: post #25

> Walmart will embed its own chatbot, Sparky, inside ChatGPT. Users will log into Walmart, sync carts across platforms, and complete purchases within Walmart’s system. The enshittification is upon us.

Hah, Clippy's cousin Sparky: every once in a while after ChatGPT answers a question it'll say "Looks like you still have stuff in your WalMart cart. Would you like me to complete that checkout for you? Also, WalMart-brand diapers is on offer this week, shall I add that to your cart?"

Post by Zambyte » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 4:26 PM UTC

sumeno wrote: post #101

pluc wrote: post #88

You can either have AI be honest or AI become a marketing tool. The two are fundamentally incompatible. You won't get it to push your products when users ask what's the best XYZ - either because it'll be too honest to lie or because it'll be too expensive for you.

Considering you can't have chat bots be honest even if you don't make them marketing tools I suspect I know which way companies are going to go

Post by Auracle » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 4:32 PM UTC

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.