What OpenAI’s ‘Instant Checkout’ Means for the Future of eCommerce

Since the introduction of the world wide web, there have been a couple evolutions in eCommerce that stick out as key historical moments; Amazon breaking on to the scene in the late 90s to sell all products A to Z, the introduction of Cyber Monday to encourage online holiday shopping, and the eCommerce boom that came from quarantined consumers during the pandemic, to name a few.

Now it’s time to add a new one to the list: OpenAI’s new “Instant Checkout” feature.

For the first time, discovery, trust, and purchase can all happen seamlessly within a single conversation. There are no new tabs to open, no carts to abandon, no competitor websites to double check that you’re getting the best deal, and no friction between consideration and conversion. 

When the discovery channel itself becomes the point of purchase, the rules of engagement change entirely. For businesses that have long relied on traditional SEO strategies, paid digital ads, and organic traffic to attract customers, OpenAI’s latest announcement means that every dollar spent chasing success with Google’s everchanging algorithm, every hour spent optimizing metadata, and every campaign built around driving clicks to a website risks becoming wasted effort if that website is no longer where buying decisions happen.

The traditional pathways to purchase are being rewritten in real time, and if you aren’t prepared to ride this next wave of eCommerce evolution, you risk being left behind in the wake.

How to Prepare for OpenAI’s Instant Checkout

This is a new frontier of discovery and purchase, and as LLMs like ChatGPT change and evolve over time, we’ll gain a clearer understanding of how they interpret intent, prioritize responses, and decide which brands or products to surface within a conversation.

But what’s already clear is this: AI agents require contextualized, enriched, and accurate product information. Unlike traditional search engines that reward keyword optimization, these new systems rely on richly detailed and well-structured data to make meaningful connections between a shopper’s query and a brand’s offering. 

That means that success no longer depends on who can outsmart an algorithm, but on who can provide the most complete, consistent, and contextualized information within a data ecosystem that AI can actually understand and trust.

It also means that businesses need to be able to create a “closed loop” between product data and the LLMs themselves in order to ensure continuous refinement. In this loop, brands provide consistent, enriched, and contextualized data, and in return, they can learn how that data is being interpreted and presented to customers. 

Building that loop is just one piece of the puzzle. To truly prepare for this next wave of eCommerce, businesses will need to rethink how they manage, enrich, and connect their product information across every channel. 

That’s why the team here at Akeneo has identified five essential capabilities that all businesses need to embrace in order to ensure their product data is ready for agentic commerce.

1. Understand how you’re currently being interpreted

You can’t optimize what you don’t understand. If you don’t know how your products are being represented inside an LLM (or how your customers are actually talking about them), you’re effectively flying blind. 

PX Insights helps you see exactly how your products and brand are being talked about across AI-powered experiences and customer channels. By capturing real-life reviews, ratings, and feedback, you gain a complete picture of how your products are being discovered (or missed), and can then refine your data accordingly.  

This means that you’re not just optimizing for today’s models like ChatGPT, but for whatever is to come next. With PX Insights, you can learn from your product data, and close the loop between how your products are presented and how they actually perform.

 The good news? For existing Akeneo customers, PX Insights is available through a one-month free trial, offering a risk-free way to see how insights-driven optimization can transform your product experience strategy.

2. Ensure your product data is discoverable

Yesterday, being “ready” meant being SEO-compliant. Today, it means being GEO-compliant — optimized for Generative AI Engines. As we mentioned earlier, this means your product data needs to be rich enough, structured enough, and accurate enough for AI to understand and recommend it confidently.

Akeneo’s Data Architect Agent makes that possible by helping you design scalable, intelligent data models in minutes, drastically reducing the time and effort usually required to structure and standardize your product catalog. It ensures your data model isn’t just functional, but future-ready, giving your products the foundation they need to be discoverable across both traditional and AI-driven channels.

Ask yourself: do your products include every attribute a shopper needs to make a buying decision? Are your descriptions, specs, and images aligned with what customers actually search for and care about? Is your product data structured clearly enough for AI models to understand and surface it confidently? Are you able to adapt your product data in real time as customer preferences and LLMs evolve?

Only when your product data meets that level of completeness, clarity, and adaptability can your products be truly discoverable in this new era of agentic commerce.

It’s also important to point out that Shopify is already one of the first platforms compatible with ChatGPT’s latest feature. That means if your Shopify store is powered by Akeneo, you’re already in an incredibly strong position. Akeneo ensures your product data in Shopify is clean, complete, and consistent across every attribute, image, and description. When that enriched data flows into ChatGPT’s instant checkout experience, your products are surfaced accurately and compellingly, helping shoppers buy faster and with confidence. 

In short, by getting your product data right in Shopify — powered by Akeneo — you can optimize this powerful new AI-driven channel even faster.

3. Utilize the full power of your existing assets

Your product content is more powerful than you think. Assets like images, spec sheets, lifestyle videos, and installation guides are data-rich resources that can drive conversions when utilized effectively. But all too often, these assets sit idle, disconnected from the product experience they’re meant to enhance. 

With Akeneo, you can extract structured information from assets like PDFs or high-resolution imagery to automatically populate product attributes, saving time, reducing manual effort, and improving accuracy.

The result? Richer, more consistent product experiences that not only builds shopper confidence but also makes your data more legible to AI agents.

4. Tailor GenAI enrichment to your brand voice

Generic prompts create generic results. In a marketplace where differentiation is everything, your brand voice can’t be left to chance. Akeneo’s AI configuration panel gives you full control over how generative AI represents your brand, from tone and style to values and vocabulary.

You can design, test, and refine AI prompts that reflect your brand’s unique character, ensuring every product description, headline, or translation feels authentically you. With brand-aligned AI enrichment, you can deliver content that’s not only faster, but unmistakably on-brand.

5. Maintain human expertise in the loop

AI alone isn’t enough; the most successful brands know that automation should empower, not replace, their teams. With Akeneo’s built-in workflows, AI-generated content moves through human review and approval before publication, combining the efficiency of automation with the discernment of human judgment.

This approach safeguards accuracy, creativity, and compliance while dramatically shortening time to market. By keeping experts in the loop, you preserve brand integrity and product quality, turning AI into a trusted collaborator, not a black box.

Preparing for the Next Wave of eCommerce

Every major shift in eCommerce has redefined what it means to compete. From the dawn of online marketplaces to the rise of mobile shopping and social commerce, each transformation rewarded the brands that adapted fastest. 

OpenAI’s “Instant Checkout” marks the next evolution, where discovery and purchase no longer live on separate steps of the buyer journey but converge in a single, AI-driven moment of decision.

At Akeneo, we believe brands that thrive in the age of agentic commerce will be those that build stronger connections between their product information and the intelligent systems interpreting it. With tools like PX Insights, AI Discovery Optimization, and Data Architect Agent, you can close the loop between how your products are represented and how they’re discovered, ensuring your brand is not only visible today, but prepared for whatever comes next.

Not sure where to even begin? You can take our PX Maturity Assessment to give you a clear view of your strengths and the areas to prioritize first. 

Whether you’re launching your first PIM project or scaling a global ecosystem, we’re ready to meet you wherever you are. The future of commerce won’t wait, but readiness doesn’t mean rebuilding everything overnight. 

With Akeneo Product Cloud, you can turn product data into your strongest competitive advantage: complete, enriched, consistent, and ready to shine in every new channel, including ChatGPT. The rules of commerce may be changing, but with the right foundation, your brand can not only keep up, but lead.