This blog was written by Tarun Chandrasekhar, President & Chief Product Officer at Syndigo.
The announcement of OpenAI’s Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), launched with Stripe and Shopify, may mark one of the biggest turning points in digital commerce since the publication of the first online Product Detail Page (PDP). Other major players like Walmart and Sam’s Club are following suit, indicating the continuation of a major trend.
The news signals a world where buying decisions move beyond traditional websites and search engines, into AI-driven conversations that understand who we are, what we need, and when we need it. Brands and retailers who adapt early to this new reality have the opportunity to cement their place as leaders on the new digital shelf, while those who fail to adapt risk being overlooked and ‘invisible’ in a fast-growing frontier of commerce.
The Five Modes of Commerce
Commerce is actively evolving across five primary channels:
- Physical Commerce – In-store experiences where interaction is tangible.
- Digital Commerce – Traditional e-commerce and Direct-to-Consumer experiences that shaped the last two decades.
- Social Commerce – Platforms like TikTok and Instagram blending entertainment and buying.
- AI Commerce – Intelligent assistants like ChatGPT guiding purchase decisions and completing transactions.
- Augmented Commerce – Mixed-reality experiences, like Meta’s display glasses, overlaying reviews, prices, and product info onto the real world.
The last two are still emerging, but they will fundamentally redefine how consumers move from discovery to purchase.
Discovery or Transaction?
A recent J.P. Morgan Equity Research call emphasized that OpenAI must decide whether it wants to be a discovery engine or a transaction engine. If it stays focused on discovery, it becomes the ultimate advisor, helping users make better decisions. If it leans into transactions, it becomes an active participant in commerce itself.
OpenAI’s first partner choice, Etsy, is telling. Etsy is about bespoke craftsmanship and personalization, which pairs naturally with ChatGPT’s contextual strengths.
As D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria noted, this could “flip the internet upside down,” shifting from search-driven websites to chat-based discovery. Bank of America’s Justin Post added that it puts OpenAI in direct competition with Google and Amazon to become the leading AI-driven starting point for commerce.
The New Advertising Frontier
Advertising has always shaped consumer sentiment and behavior, from print to Google AdSense to retail media networks. AI commerce challenges this model. When a language model becomes the interface of trust, the traditional funnel collapses into a single personalized recommendation.
Media strategist Eric Seufert suggests that OpenAI’s Instant Checkout could become the foundation of its future advertising model, with transaction data attached to user profiles becoming “enormously valuable for ad targeting”. That data could make AI commerce the most personalized (and potentially the most intrusive) advertising model ever created. Balancing personalization and trust will be the defining challenge for brands in this unexplored, but highly potent, new channel for consumer engagement.
The Turf War for AI Commerce
Retail giants are already fighting for position. Amazon’s Rufus, Walmart’s Sparky, and Meta’s AI-powered Ray-Ban smart glasses all show how AI will be embedded directly into shopping experiences. As Eric Bellomo of PitchBook observed, commerce has always been the proving ground for major technology shifts – from the internet to cloud to mobile, and AI commerce will be no different.
Analysts are calling this an “AI shopping turf war.” Amazon and Shopify are already limiting how external AI agents can access their data. Accurate, structured product data is now a competitive weapon, and whoever controls it will control visibility in AI-driven discovery.
The Role and Future of the PDP
If AI interfaces are capable of directly offering and selling products to consumers, we’re faced with the key question: Is the PDP dead?
Not quite. But the role of this long-fundamental piece of digital real estate is changing dramatically. The traditional product detail page was built for search engines and human browsing. In an AI-driven world, where buying journeys happen through chat, voice, or augmented overlays, the PDP’s role shifts from being a destination to being a trusted source of truth.
The PDP’s role shifts from being a destination to being a trusted source of truth.
AI commerce turns every interaction into a potential product experience. Instead of static pages, PDPs will evolve into dynamic, machine-readable profiles that feed LLMs and commerce agents with real-time, structured, and validated data. Product content will need to be designed for agents, not just humans – complete, contextual, and ready to power any experience, anywhere.
The Role of AI-Ready Product Data
This is where excellence in Product Experience Management infrastructure becomes critical. Product information, data, description, and multimedia content all need to be accurate, up-to-date, verifiable, and easily accessible to AI for it to make an impact in this new era of commerce.
If AI’s goal is simply to reduce friction, it’s an imperative for brands and retailers to source the infrastructure for complete, trusted product data that powers accurate and compliant recommendations. If AI evolves into a full transaction engine they need to find the bridge that connects their data with these agentic ecosystems—ensuring that product narratives stay consistent even as the role and shape of the traditional product detail page evolve.
The Path Forward
AI commerce is still in its early innings. Meta’s display glasses could make every real-world encounter shoppable, while OpenAI’s ACP could turn every conversation into a buying opportunity. Or perhaps some other player we haven’t even considered will emerge and disrupt the entire ecosystem.
What remains constant is the need for trust – trust in the data, the content, and in how AI uses both to influence decisions. Building that foundation is where Syndigo can help.
