Walmart has announced a new collaboration with OpenAI, enabling customers to purchase Walmart products—including groceries (excluding perishables), household essentials, and more—directly through an AI chatbot, with instant checkout functionality.
The company stated that this intelligent shopping feature will also allow Sam’s Club members to plan meals, restock essentials, and discover new products while chatting with the AI assistant.
To utilize this feature, customers will need to press the “Buy” button within the ChatGPT app while shopping and link their Walmart account to ChatGPT. When launched this fall, the functionality will also support products from third-party sellers.
Walmart explained that this new agreement with OpenAI will help the retailer better understand and anticipate customer needs, making online shopping more personalized and proactive rather than simply reactive.
The partnership follows OpenAI’s recent announcement of its plans to enter the e-commerce space through a smart shopping system that includes product discovery, recommendations, and payment processing. Initially, OpenAI is collaborating with sellers on Etsy and Shopify, the company said.
The ChatGPT-integrated shopping feature won’t be the only way consumers can shop using AI. In addition to other AI investments, Walmart recently launched its own generative AI shopping assistant, Sparky, designed to help shoppers discover and compare products and make purchases. The feature will later expand to include reorder capabilities, service bookings, and support for multimodal inputs such as text, images, audio, and video.
The retailer already has an existing relationship with OpenAI across other areas of its business, having adopted OpenAI certification and the enterprise version of ChatGPT for internal teams. Walmart and Sam’s Club are already using AI for various tasks, such as accelerating fashion production by up to 18 weeks and improving customer service response times by up to 40%.
“For years, the e-commerce shopping experience has been defined by search bars and long lists of products. That is about to change,” noted Walmart President and CEO Doug McMillon in a prepared statement. “A native AI experience is coming—one that is multimedia, personalized, and contextual. We’re moving toward this more enjoyable and convenient future by leveraging Sparky and strategic partnerships, including this significant collaboration with OpenAI,” he added.