{ "title": "AI shopping assistants and the product data they read", "publisher": { "name": "Autopilot, Inc.", "url": "https://www.autopilotbrand.com/" }, "page": "https://www.autopilotbrand.com/resources/ai-shopping-assistants", "scope": "Consumer-facing AI assistants that recommend or buy physical products for US shoppers", "factsVerified": "2026-10-08", "attributeStatusLegend": { "required": "at least one documented feed or program requires the field, sometimes only under conditions", "supported": "documented as read, accepted or used", "not-documented": "the operator says nothing about it", "no-field": "the operator's specification has no such field", "not-applicable": "no such mechanism exists for this assistant" }, "assistants": [ { "name": "Alexa for Shopping", "operator": "Amazon", "url": "https://www.autopilotbrand.com/resources/ai-shopping-assistants#alexa-for-shopping", "documentationLevel": "partial", "summary": "Alexa for Shopping is Amazon's shopping assistant, launched in the US on May 13, 2026 as the successor to Rufus. It reads product data from Amazon's own catalog, customer reviews and community Q&A, and, through Shop Direct and Buy for Me, from public merchant websites outside Amazon, which are included by default unless the merchant opts out.", "usStatus": "Live for all US customers since May 2026", "documentedProductDataSources": "Amazon catalog, reviews and Q&A; public merchant sites and feeds via Shop Direct", "buysForShopper": "Yes: Amazon checkout; Buy for Me on merchant sites for eligible products, one item per order", "attributes": { "Price": "supported", "Availability": "supported", "GTIN": "not-documented", "Brand": "not-documented", "Title": "supported", "Description": "supported", "Attributes": "not-documented", "Variants": "not-documented", "Images": "supported", "Category": "not-documented", "Shipping": "supported", "Returns": "not-documented", "Reviews": "supported", "Checkout flag": "not-applicable" }, "details": { "US status": "Launched May 13, 2026 for US customers in the Amazon Shopping app, on Amazon.com and on Echo Show, and rolled out to all US customers over the following week. Free when signed in; Prime is not required. Buy for Me covers eligible products and single-item orders.", "Documentation": "Partial. Amazon names its sources as categories (catalog and listing details, reviews, community Q&A, information from across the web) but publishes no guidance on which listing fields the assistant uses or how they are weighted.", "Product data sources": "Amazon catalog and listing details; Amazon customer reviews and community Q&A; the customer's shopping history and Alexa conversations; for Shop Direct and Buy for Me, data from public merchant websites by default, or merchant feeds through Feedonomics, Salsify or CEDCommerce. Amazon says that when several merchants sell the same product, it may combine product descriptions from across their sites. Amazon also cites information from across the web without scoping it.", "Attributes documented": "Prices, with 30, 90 and 365-day price history; images; shipping and delivery timeframes gathered from merchant sites; reviews and Q&A. Amazon does not document identifiers, brand, bullet points, variants or category for the assistant. For Shop Direct feeds, Amazon says inventory syncs in real time, and Salsify, a feed partner, lists identifiers, brand and category among the data it sends.", "How products get in": "Amazon documents no separate enrollment for Alexa for Shopping, so products listed through Seller Central or Vendor Central appear to be in scope by default, and Amazon Ads says existing sponsored ads campaigns are automatically eligible. Amazon can include products from brands that sell outside Amazon in Shop Direct, using information on their public websites and without the brand opting in, and decides whether and how to show them. Feeds are opt-in; Amazon's merchant FAQ gives shopdirect@amazon.com for opting out.", "What it can do": "Recommends and buys on Amazon, including Auto Buy at a target price, which Amazon launched for Prime members in November 2025. Buy for Me completes checkout on the brand's own site for a single item, with the merchant as seller of record; the merchant's return terms apply, and Amazon's return policy and A-to-z Guarantee do not. Sponsored prompts reached US general availability on March 25, 2026, billed per click, and Alexa+ agentic ads, launched in June 2026 with a few partners such as Papa Johns and Ticketmaster, complete purchases inside an Echo Show conversation.", "Crawlers and access": "Amazon documents Amazonbot, Amzn-SearchBot and Amzn-User but does not tie them to Alexa for Shopping. Amazon's robots.txt disallows dozens of named AI crawlers and agents, including OpenAI's GPTBot, ChatGPT-User and OAI-SearchBot, Anthropic's ClaudeBot, Claude-User and Claude-SearchBot, and Perplexity's PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User. Its Conditions of Use have contained Agent Terms since May 2025 (the current version is dated August 14, 2026), requiring software that acts autonomously on Amazon to identify itself as an agent. Autopilot's Agentsite crawl figures (October 2026): an Amazon crawler first appeared on August 21, 2026 and has crawled every week since; the figures do not name the crawler.", "Conflicts in the documentation": "Amazon's help page describes the Shop Brands Directly features as app-only, while its March 2026 post lists Amazon.com, the app and mobile web. Amazon's January 2026 statement gave branddirect@amazon.com for opt-outs; the live FAQ gives shopdirect@amazon.com." }, "sources": [ { "title": "How to use Alexa for Shopping (Amazon)", "url": "https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/how-to-use-amazon-shopping-ai-assistant" }, { "title": "Shop Direct merchant FAQ (Amazon)", "url": "https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=204815362011" }, { "title": "Shop Direct expansion (Amazon)", "url": "https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-shop-direct-external-stores" }, { "title": "Agentic shopping and advertising (Amazon Ads)", "url": "https://advertising.amazon.com/library/news/agentic-shopping-advertising" }, { "title": "Sponsored prompts (Amazon Ads)", "url": "https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/unboxed-2025-sponsored-products-and-sponsored-brands-prompts" }, { "title": "Conditions of Use, Agent Terms (Amazon)", "url": "https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=508088" }, { "title": "Amazonbot and Amazon crawlers (Amazon)", "url": "https://developer.amazon.com/support/amazonbot" }, { "title": "Before AI Assistant Sales Comes AI Attention (Autopilot, Oct 4, 2026)", "url": "https://www.autopilotbrand.com/post/ai-attention-comes-first" } ], "lastVerified": "2026-10-08" }, { "name": "ChatGPT", "operator": "OpenAI", "url": "https://www.autopilotbrand.com/resources/ai-shopping-assistants#chatgpt", "documentationLevel": "partial", "summary": "ChatGPT reads product data from merchant feeds submitted under OpenAI's product feed specification, from Shopify's catalog for eligible stores and Etsy's catalog, both integrated by default, and from product pages crawled by OAI-SearchBot. Purchases complete on the merchant's own site or app by default; in-chat Instant Checkout was deprioritized on March 24, 2026 and remains in beta only for select marketplace partners.", "usStatus": "Shopping live for US users", "documentedProductDataSources": "Merchant feeds (approved partners), Shopify and Etsy catalogs, OAI-SearchBot crawl", "buysForShopper": "Limited: hands off to the merchant by default", "attributes": { "Price": "required", "Availability": "required", "GTIN": "supported", "Brand": "required", "Title": "required", "Description": "required", "Attributes": "no-field", "Variants": "required", "Images": "required", "Category": "supported", "Shipping": "supported", "Returns": "supported", "Reviews": "supported", "Checkout flag": "supported" }, "details": { "US status": "OpenAI's merchant page states that shopping is currently live for ChatGPT users in the US. Shopping research is available to logged-in Free, Go, Plus and Pro users. Direct product feed onboarding is limited to approved partners, with a waitlist. OpenAI states there are no fees on purchases that start in ChatGPT.", "Documentation": "Partial. The feed specification is explicit, with required and optional fields. How feed data, crawled pages and reviews are weighted is not documented, and the first-party and third-party providers that OpenAI says supply structured metadata are not named.", "Product data sources": "Merchant feeds under OpenAI's specification, by SFTP file upload or the Feeds API (approved partners); Shopify Catalog for eligible Shopify stores; Etsy's catalog; product and retailer pages crawled by OAI-SearchBot and fetched on request by ChatGPT-User; unnamed first-party and third-party data providers; reviews from public websites, which feed model-generated review summaries, though OpenAI says it does not verify reviews or ratings; merchant apps inside ChatGPT, such as Walmart's and Target's; and Klarna's Shopping Search app, which searches Klarna's product catalog and sends purchases to merchant sites.", "Attributes documented": "Required in the feed: item ID, title, description, product URL, brand, seller name, image URL, availability and price, plus variant grouping fields for products with variants. Supported: sale price, GTIN or MPN, category path, shipping price, return policy and window, review count and star rating. The specification has no inventory-quantity field and no bullet or highlight field.", "How products get in": "Apply at chatgpt.com/merchants as an approved partner; OpenAI says a self-serve portal will follow. Shopify and Etsy catalogs are already integrated, and Shopify merchants manage the channel under Sales channels, then Agentic. OpenAI's merchant FAQ says a feed is not needed if ChatGPT already crawls the site, which requires allowing OAI-SearchBot.", "What it can do": "Recommends products in organic results that OpenAI says are not ads. By default it hands the shopper to the merchant's site or app; Shopify checkouts open in ChatGPT's in-app browser on mobile. Partner apps such as Walmart's run the merchant's own checkout inside ChatGPT. Ads have been tested with US Free and Go users since February 9, 2026, and during the current beta, products from Ads Manager feeds appear only in ads, not in organic results.", "Crawlers and access": "OAI-SearchBot surfaces sites in ChatGPT search; ChatGPT-User makes fetches a user triggers. Amazon's robots.txt disallows GPTBot, ChatGPT-User and OAI-SearchBot, so Amazon pages are excluded from shopping research. Autopilot's Agentsite crawl figures (October 2026): each of the nine sites was crawled by OpenAI or Meta within a week of going live in June 2026, and OpenAI has crawled the sites continuously since.", "Conflicts in the documentation": "OpenAI's merchant page limits shopping to the US, while its March 24, 2026 post announces the rollout to all Free, Go, Plus and Pro users without a US qualifier. OpenAI's pages also list different accepted feed file formats." }, "sources": [ { "title": "ChatGPT for merchants (OpenAI)", "url": "https://chatgpt.com/merchants" }, { "title": "Product feed specification (OpenAI)", "url": "https://developers.openai.com/commerce/specs/file-upload/products.md" }, { "title": "Powering product discovery in ChatGPT (OpenAI, Mar 24, 2026)", "url": "https://openai.com/index/powering-product-discovery-in-chatgpt/" }, { "title": "Shopping with ChatGPT search (OpenAI Help)", "url": "https://help.openai.com/en/articles/11128490-shopping-with-chatgpt-search" }, { "title": "Shopping research (OpenAI)", "url": "https://openai.com/index/chatgpt-shopping-research/" }, { "title": "Plugin guidelines, checkout (OpenAI)", "url": "https://developers.openai.com/plugins/plugin-guidelines.md" }, { "title": "Ads in ChatGPT (OpenAI Help)", "url": "https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001047-ads-in-chatgpt" }, { "title": "OpenAI crawlers", "url": "https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots" }, { "title": "Before AI Assistant Sales Comes AI Attention (Autopilot, Oct 4, 2026)", "url": "https://www.autopilotbrand.com/post/ai-attention-comes-first" } ], "lastVerified": "2026-10-08" }, { "name": "Claude", "operator": "Anthropic", "url": "https://www.autopilotbrand.com/resources/ai-shopping-assistants#claude", "documentationLevel": "partial", "summary": "Claude has no shopping product, merchant feed program or native checkout. It reaches product information through web search, live page fetches by Claude-User, the Claude-SearchBot index and connectors such as Instacart, and its browser extension, Claude in Chrome, is prohibited from making purchases.", "usStatus": "No shopping product", "documentedProductDataSources": "Web search, Claude-User fetches, Claude-SearchBot index, connectors", "buysForShopper": "No documented in-chat payment; connectors such as Instacart hand the cart to the platform's own checkout", "attributes": { "Price": "not-documented", "Availability": "not-documented", "GTIN": "not-documented", "Brand": "not-documented", "Title": "not-documented", "Description": "not-documented", "Attributes": "not-documented", "Variants": "not-documented", "Images": "supported", "Category": "not-documented", "Shipping": "not-documented", "Returns": "not-documented", "Reviews": "not-documented", "Checkout flag": "not-applicable" }, "details": { "US status": "Web search has been available on all Claude plans globally since May 27, 2025. The Instacart connector is available to US users and sends carts to the user's Instacart account. Claude in Chrome is available on paid plans.", "Documentation": "Partial. Anthropic documents its crawlers and its connector policies, but not how product information is selected or ranked in answers.", "Product data sources": "Web search results (press reports list Brave Search as a subprocessor; Anthropic's product pages do not name the provider); Bing-powered image search for product images, each linked to its source; Claude-User fetches and the Claude-SearchBot index; connectors such as Instacart, which supplies live inventory; product pages a user has open, read by Claude in Chrome. Shopify's Agentic Storefronts do not list Claude as a channel.", "Attributes documented": "Product images only, in Anthropic's documentation. Anthropic documents no price, availability, identifier or other product field for Claude's answers; the live inventory in the Instacart connector is documented by Instacart.", "How products get in": "There is no feed or merchant program. Brands can allow Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User in robots.txt; ClaudeBot controls only model training. Connectors can be submitted to Anthropic's directory, whose policy excludes connectors that execute financial transactions or serve ads unless Anthropic permits it in writing. Anthropic's Commerce Agents blueprint, released September 2, 2026, is open-source reference code that merchants deploy on their own sites; it is not a Claude.ai feature.", "What it can do": "Recommends products in written answers; third parties have observed product image rows since June 2026, which Anthropic has not announced. It does not take payment. Anthropic says there are no paid placements or sponsored answers, and pledged in February 2026 to keep Claude free of ads.", "Crawlers and access": "ClaudeBot (training), Claude-User (user-triggered fetches) and Claude-SearchBot (search indexing), each controllable separately in robots.txt; Amazon's robots.txt disallows all three. Autopilot's Agentsite crawl figures (October 2026): ClaudeBot arrives in large sweeps, 51,000 hits in one week in June and 44,000 in one week in August, and is the second most active crawler overall.", "Conflicts in the documentation": "Anthropic's April 23, 2026 connectors post says Claude checks with the user before it books or purchases through connectors, while its help center says purchases through third-party interactive connectors are not supported." }, "sources": [ { "title": "Enable and use web search (Anthropic)", "url": "https://support.claude.com/en/articles/10684626-enable-and-use-web-search" }, { "title": "Anthropic crawlers and robots.txt", "url": "https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8896518-does-anthropic-crawl-data-from-the-web-and-how-can-site-owners-block-the-crawler" }, { "title": "Connectors for everyday life (Anthropic, Apr 23, 2026)", "url": "https://claude.com/blog/connectors-for-everyday-life" }, { "title": "Use interactive connectors (Anthropic)", "url": "https://support.claude.com/en/articles/13454812-use-interactive-connectors-in-claude" }, { "title": "Software Directory Policy (Anthropic)", "url": "https://support.claude.com/en/articles/13145358-anthropic-software-directory-policy" }, { "title": "Claude in Chrome permissions (Anthropic)", "url": "https://support.claude.com/en/articles/12902446" }, { "title": "Claude for commerce agents (Anthropic, Sep 2, 2026)", "url": "https://claude.com/resources/articles/claude-for-commerce-agents" }, { "title": "Claude is a space to think (Anthropic)", "url": "https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-is-a-space-to-think" }, { "title": "Before AI Assistant Sales Comes AI Attention (Autopilot, Oct 4, 2026)", "url": "https://www.autopilotbrand.com/post/ai-attention-comes-first" } ], "lastVerified": "2026-10-08" }, { "name": "Copilot", "operator": "Microsoft", "url": "https://www.autopilotbrand.com/resources/ai-shopping-assistants#copilot", "documentationLevel": "partial", "summary": "Microsoft Copilot reads product data from Microsoft Merchant Center feeds, which Microsoft made Universal Commerce Protocol ready in April 2026, from the Bing web index, and from catalogs syndicated by Shopify, PayPal and Stripe. Copilot Checkout is limited to English-language merchants selling to US buyers in US dollars.", "usStatus": "Checkout documented for US buyers, English-language merchants, USD; unconfirmed since the August and September 2026 Copilot app merger", "documentedProductDataSources": "Microsoft Merchant Center feeds, Bing index, Shopify, PayPal and Stripe catalogs", "buysForShopper": "Per merchant docs: Copilot Checkout (beta); status after the app merger unconfirmed", "attributes": { "Price": "required", "Availability": "supported", "GTIN": "required", "Brand": "required", "Title": "required", "Description": "required", "Attributes": "no-field", "Variants": "required", "Images": "required", "Category": "supported", "Shipping": "supported", "Returns": "required", "Reviews": "supported", "Checkout flag": "required" }, "details": { "US status": "Copilot Checkout began rolling out on Copilot.com on January 8, 2026 and reached the Copilot mobile app on April 21, 2026, the day UCP-ready feeds became generally available in the US. The Merchant Center checkout setting is open to beta participants and UCP checkout is a pilot for select customers. Microsoft merged consumer Copilot into the Microsoft 365 Copilot app in August and September 2026, and no consumer-facing Microsoft source yet confirms that shopping and checkout carried over.", "Documentation": "Partial. The feed specification is explicit. How web and feed data are combined is described only generally: Microsoft says it uses both information found on the web and a merchant's feed.", "Product data sources": "Microsoft Merchant Center feeds; the Bing web index; Shopify Catalog through Microsoft's commerce API; PayPal Store Sync catalogs; the Stripe Agentic Commerce Suite catalog feed, per Microsoft; Etsy inventory; results from advertisers, labeled sponsored.", "Attributes documented": "Required: item ID; product link; price, matching the landing page and excluding tax in the US; title; description; image; GTIN, MPN and brand when the manufacturer assigned them; a store-level return policy for UCP. Microsoft's onboarding page also lists checkout eligibility and a Merchant Item ID for Copilot Checkout without giving their feed field names. Color, size, gender and age group are required for apparel and accessories targeting the US; the item group ID is optional. Supported: availability, category and shipping. Review summaries are shown, but their source is not documented and the feed has no review field.", "How products get in": "Shopify merchants are enrolled in Copilot Checkout automatically after an opt-out window and manage it under Sales channels, then Agentic. PayPal and Stripe merchants opt in. Microsoft's current agentic commerce onboarding page says a Microsoft Merchant Center account is required to onboard to Copilot Checkout and that a product feed is required to power discovery and checkout. A January 2026 Microsoft Advertising post said Merchant Center was not required to sell through Copilot Checkout, and Microsoft has not said which statement governs. Microsoft says it takes no commission today.", "What it can do": "Recommends products, and for merchants outside Copilot Checkout hands the shopper to the retailer's purchase page. Copilot Checkout completes the purchase in Copilot with the merchant as merchant of record. Sponsored results come from advertisers, and Brand Agents let Shopify merchants, and WooCommerce merchants since April 2026, run a branded assistant on their own sites.", "Crawlers and access": "Bingbot builds the index that grounds Copilot's web answers. Third-party pages reach Copilot through the Bing crawl; Merchant Center feeds must link to a product page on the verified store domain, or, for aggregators, directly to the seller's own product page.", "Conflicts in the documentation": "The feed specification marks availability optional with a default of in stock, while the Content API requires it on insert. Product-warning fields carry different names on two Microsoft pages. Microsoft describes 500,000 merchants as catalog coverage, while Microsoft-sourced press describes them as Copilot Checkout participants." }, "sources": [ { "title": "Agentic commerce onboarding (Microsoft Advertising)", "url": "https://about.ads.microsoft.com/en/solutions/technology/agentic-commerce" }, { "title": "Make your store UCP ready (Microsoft)", "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/advertising/msa-help/hlp_ba_conc_bmc_ucp" }, { "title": "Product attributes, Merchant Center feed (Microsoft)", "url": "https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/advertising/msa-help/hlp_ba_conc_aboutbingmerchantcentercatalogfile" }, { "title": "Copilot Checkout and Brand Agents (Microsoft, Jan 2026)", "url": "https://about.ads.microsoft.com/en/blog/post/january-2026/conversations-that-convert-copilot-checkout-and-brand-agents" }, { "title": "UCP-ready feeds and mobile checkout (Microsoft, Apr 2026)", "url": "https://about.ads.microsoft.com/en/blog/post/april-2026/win-across-all-three-eras-of-the-web" }, { "title": "Shopping with Microsoft Copilot (Microsoft Support)", "url": "https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot/shopping-with-microsoft-copilot" } ], "lastVerified": "2026-10-08" }, { "name": "Gemini and AI Mode", "operator": "Google", "url": "https://www.autopilotbrand.com/resources/ai-shopping-assistants#gemini-ai-mode", "documentationLevel": "explicit", "summary": "Google's AI Mode in Search and the Gemini app read product data from the Shopping Graph, which Google reported at more than 60 billion listings in May 2026 and which is built from Merchant Center feeds, Manufacturer Center and crawled schema.org Product markup. Google is the only operator in this tracker rated Explicit, documenting both its product data sources and its required fields; OpenAI and Microsoft also publish explicit feed specifications but leave some sources unnamed or describe how they are combined only in general terms. Google states that no AI-specific files or markup are needed.", "usStatus": "Live for US users; checkout for select US merchants", "documentedProductDataSources": "Shopping Graph: Merchant Center, Manufacturer Center, crawled Product markup", "buysForShopper": "Yes: UCP checkout, select merchants", "attributes": { "Price": "required", "Availability": "required", "GTIN": "required", "Brand": "required", "Title": "required", "Description": "required", "Attributes": "supported", "Variants": "required", "Images": "required", "Category": "supported", "Shipping": "required", "Returns": "required", "Reviews": "supported", "Checkout flag": "required" }, "details": { "US status": "AI Mode opened to all US users in May 2025. Shopping in the Gemini app has been available to all US Gemini users since November 13, 2025, for users 18 and older on personal accounts with Keep Activity on. Native checkout over the Universal Commerce Protocol has been rolling out since February 11, 2026 as an early access program for select merchants, starting with Etsy and Wayfair, and Google approves each integration. Universal Cart is available only in the US.", "Documentation": "Explicit. Google publishes the product data specification, the checkout eligibility attribute and the onboarding steps, and states that AI Mode and AI Overviews need no additional requirements beyond normal Search indexing.", "Product data sources": "The Shopping Graph, fed by Merchant Center and Manufacturer Center; Merchant Center's crawl of schema.org Product and Offer markup on merchant sites, including automatic item updates; the Google Search index built by Googlebot; at checkout, the merchant's UCP endpoints for real-time price, stock, shipping and tax; Merchant Center loyalty data, in the US.", "Attributes documented": "Required: ID, title (up to 150 characters), description (up to 5,000), product link, image, price and availability; brand for new products other than movies, books and music; MPN when a product has no manufacturer-assigned GTIN (Google calls GTIN strongly recommended, and free listings require it when one is assigned); shipping costs for free listings in the US; item group ID for all variants, plus color and size for apparel and for products sold in more than one color or size. Supported: sale price, product highlights and details, conversational attributes such as answers to common product questions and related products, and category, which Google can assign automatically. A return policy is required for UCP checkout. Ratings come through the separate Product Ratings program. Checkout requires the native_commerce checkout eligibility attribute set to true; it defaults to false.", "How products get in": "Discovery is open to any merchant through Merchant Center, by feed or by letting Merchant Center crawl the store's Product markup. Checkout requires a UCP integration, early access approval and the checkout eligibility attribute. Shopify merchants reach Google through the Google and YouTube channel or Merchant Center, and in September 2026 eligible US Shopify merchants were told native checkout had been enabled automatically, with opt-out under Sales channels, then Agentic (press).", "What it can do": "Recommends products, hands off to merchant sites, and completes purchases through UCP native checkout for select US merchants with the merchant as seller of record. Since November 13, 2025, for eligible merchants, an agentic checkout can buy on the merchant's own site after a price-tracking trigger and the user's confirmation. Universal Cart holds items across merchants. Payment runs on Google Pay; PayPal has been listed as coming soon since January 11, 2026. Shopping ads in AI Mode are labeled Sponsored and in testing.", "Crawlers and access": "Googlebot builds the index for AI Mode and AI Overviews. Google-Extended does not affect inclusion in Search; AI features are controlled through Googlebot and snippet directives. Google states that no new machine-readable files and no special schema.org markup are needed for its AI features. Autopilot's Agentsite crawl figures (October 2026): Google appears in the September operator mix; Google does not document reading the sites.", "Conflicts in the documentation": "Google's UCP integration hub page says checkout applies to products sold within the United States, while its help article on UCP-powered checkout names product eligibility in the US, Canada and Australia." }, "sources": [ { "title": "Product data specification (Google Merchant Center)", "url": "https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/7052112" }, { "title": "UCP Merchant Center setup (Google)", "url": "https://developers.google.com/merchant/ucp/guides/merchant-center" }, { "title": "UCP integration hub in Merchant Center (Google)", "url": "https://developers.google.com/merchant/ucp/guides/tools/merchant-center/overview" }, { "title": "UCP FAQ (Google)", "url": "https://developers.google.com/merchant/ucp/faq" }, { "title": "AI features and your website (Google Search Central)", "url": "https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features" }, { "title": "Merchant listing structured data (Google)", "url": "https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/merchant-listing" }, { "title": "UCP checkout rollout (Google, Feb 11, 2026)", "url": "https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/digital-advertising-commerce-2026/" }, { "title": "Universal Cart (Google Wallet Help)", "url": "https://support.google.com/wallet/answer/17085590" }, { "title": "Google crawlers", "url": "https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/google-common-crawlers" }, { "title": "Before AI Assistant Sales Comes AI Attention (Autopilot, Oct 4, 2026)", "url": "https://www.autopilotbrand.com/post/ai-attention-comes-first" } ], "lastVerified": "2026-10-08" }, { "name": "Instinct", "operator": "Spear Street Technology", "url": "https://www.autopilotbrand.com/resources/ai-shopping-assistants#instinct", "documentationLevel": "vague", "summary": "Instinct is an invite-only personal agent reached by text message, WhatsApp and phone. Its documented product data path is a Shopify partnership announced September 28, 2026, through which it searches Shopify merchants for live prices, sizes and availability; how that integration works is not documented.", "usStatus": "Invite-only beta", "documentedProductDataSources": "Shopify merchant network; merchant sites through its own browser", "buysForShopper": "Yes, with approval of each purchase", "attributes": { "Price": "supported", "Availability": "supported", "GTIN": "not-documented", "Brand": "not-documented", "Title": "not-documented", "Description": "not-documented", "Attributes": "not-documented", "Variants": "supported", "Images": "not-documented", "Category": "not-documented", "Shipping": "not-documented", "Returns": "not-documented", "Reviews": "not-documented", "Checkout flag": "not-applicable" }, "details": { "US status": "Invite-only private beta, joined by waitlist or invitation, free during the beta, with no mobile app. Its terms say the service is operated in the United States and require users to be 18 or older. The launch date is reported differently: TechCrunch says August 2026, while SiliconANGLE reports a private beta from February 2026.", "Documentation": "Vague. Instinct's public material does not describe its product data sources or integration mechanics; most detail comes from the founder's posts and press.", "Product data sources": "Shopify merchants, for live prices, sizes and availability, through the September 28, 2026 partnership; merchant websites operated by Instinct's own cloud browser using credentials the user stores with it (partially documented); the user's connected email, messages, calendar and Shop account history; Instinct Selections, human-curated picks launched September 29, 2026 in early access.", "Attributes documented": "Price, availability and sizes from Shopify stores. No other product field is documented.", "How products get in": "There is no merchant program, feed or opt-in. Shopify merchants are reachable through the partnership; Shopify's Agentic Storefronts help pages do not list Instinct as a named channel, and they do not say whether it falls under the Other channels setting.", "What it can do": "Buys with the user's approval of each purchase. On Shopify stores it prepares the order for Shop Pay checkout; since August 28, 2026, for users with a Link wallet, it can pay with a one-time Stripe Link card for an amount the user approves. Its terms say Instinct is not a party to the purchase. It has not said whether it earns money on Selections.", "Crawlers and access": "No crawler is documented. Instinct acts through a browser with the user's credentials." }, "sources": [ { "title": "Instinct Terms of Service", "url": "https://instinct.com/terms" }, { "title": "Instinct Privacy Policy", "url": "https://instinct.com/privacy-policy" }, { "title": "Shopify partnership (Instinct founder, Sep 28, 2026)", "url": "https://x.com/noahrshinn/status/2104628465488306183" }, { "title": "Stripe Link payments (Instinct founder, Aug 28, 2026)", "url": "https://x.com/noahrshinn/status/2093368511003574730" }, { "title": "Private beta since February (SiliconANGLE, Aug 27, 2026)", "url": "https://siliconangle.com/2026/08/27/consumer-focused-ai-assistant-startup-instinct-reportedly-raising-250m/" }, { "title": "Instinct Selections (TechCrunch)", "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/30/instincts-new-product-recommendations-are-giving-some-users-the-ick/" } ], "lastVerified": "2026-10-08" }, { "name": "Muse", "operator": "Meta", "url": "https://www.autopilotbrand.com/resources/ai-shopping-assistants#muse", "documentationLevel": "partial", "summary": "Muse is Meta's personal AI agent, rolling out in the US since September 8, 2026. It gets product data from Shopify merchants' catalogs, which Shopify shares with Meta by default, from partner connectors, and by operating retail websites in its own browser inside a secure virtual machine, where its activity appears as the user's own.", "usStatus": "Rolling out in the US since September 2026", "documentedProductDataSources": "Shopify catalogs; retail sites through its own browser; partner connectors", "buysForShopper": "Yes: Link by Stripe", "attributes": { "Price": "supported", "Availability": "supported", "GTIN": "not-documented", "Brand": "not-documented", "Title": "required", "Description": "supported", "Attributes": "supported", "Variants": "supported", "Images": "required", "Category": "required", "Shipping": "not-documented", "Returns": "required", "Reviews": "not-documented", "Checkout flag": "not-documented" }, "details": { "US status": "Rolling out in the US since September 8, 2026 on iOS, Android and muse.ai, and reachable in WhatsApp; users must be 18 or older. Canada was added around September 18. Link checkout is for US consumers, and Shopify's direct checkout on Meta surfaces is shown to customers in the US, Canada and Mexico. Amazon has blocked Muse from ordering on Amazon.com since September 20, 2026 (press).", "Documentation": "Partial. Meta documents how Muse browses and how connectors work; the product data path from Shopify is documented by Shopify, whose own pages conflict.", "Product data sources": "Shopify Catalog, or the Facebook and Instagram sales channel, depending on which Shopify page is read; live browsing in a Chromium browser inside the user's Muse Secure VM, which reads a snapshot of the page; partner connectors over API or MCP, where commerce connectors must support search, availability, pricing and terms, authorization, checkout where needed, and confirmation; the user's connected Facebook, Instagram and Threads data; web search, which Meta has not documented for Muse (a partner described the Muse Spark model API as having built-in search with citations), with an undisclosed backend. Meta's documented crawlers are not named as Muse sources.", "Attributes documented": "Through Shopify Catalog: a title and at least one product image are required; price, availability, options and variants, and metafields are used; uncategorized products are excluded; a return and refund policy is required for the Shopify Meta channel. Identifiers, brand, shipping and reviews are not documented.", "How products get in": "Eligible Shopify merchants are included by default and can turn off Meta per channel under Sales channels, then Agentic, though Shopify says products may still be referenced through web crawling and indexing. Shopify's per-channel direct checkout toggle is on by default for eligible stores selling to the US, Canada or Mexico. Retailers and service providers apply to the Muse Connector Platform at muse.ai/platform; Meta has named Walmart, Best Buy, Sephora, Ulta and Wayfair among retail connectors it is adding.", "What it can do": "Recommends and buys. By default an approval card appears before each purchase. Checkout runs on Link by Stripe; Shopify reported Shop Pay live in Muse on September 24, 2026 while Meta still lists it as coming soon; PayPal was announced on September 22 and was not yet available as of October 3 (CNBC). For Shopify orders, the merchant is merchant of record; Meta's terms say third-party services are not controlled by Meta. Meta has said it expects to take a small fee from transactions, with no rate or date given.", "Crawlers and access": "Muse has no crawler token of its own; its browser activity appears as the user's, so robots.txt cannot target it. Autopilot's Agentsite crawl figures (October 2026): Meta's crawler, the largest in June and early July, went quiet and returned in the week of September 7, 2026; Meta launched Muse on September 8 but has not said that any of its crawlers supply Muse.", "Conflicts in the documentation": "Shopify's Meta channel page and its September 8 changelog say products reach Meta through Shopify Catalog by default; Shopify's products and data-privacy pages say Meta discovery runs through the Facebook and Instagram sales channel. Shop Pay's status differs between Meta and Shopify." }, "sources": [ { "title": "Introducing Muse (Meta, Sep 8, 2026)", "url": "https://about.fb.com/news/2026/09/introducing-muse" }, { "title": "How your Muse agent browses the web (Meta Help)", "url": "https://www.meta.com/help/artificial-intelligence/2124746764949121/" }, { "title": "How Muse works with connectors (Meta Help)", "url": "https://www.meta.com/help/artificial-intelligence/1687253048996149/" }, { "title": "Security and safety in Muse (Meta)", "url": "https://research.meta.ai/blog/security-and-safety-for-ai-agents-our-approach-with-muse" }, { "title": "Muse Connector Platform docs (Meta)", "url": "https://muse.ai/platform/docs" }, { "title": "Agentic storefronts: Meta (Shopify Help)", "url": "https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/online-sales-channels/agentic-storefronts/meta" }, { "title": "Meta is now an AI channel (Shopify changelog)", "url": "https://changelog.shopify.com/posts/meta-is-now-an-ai-channel-in-your-admin" }, { "title": "Muse shopping walkthrough (CNBC, Oct 3, 2026)", "url": "https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/03/meta-muse-shopping-ai-agent.html" }, { "title": "Before AI Assistant Sales Comes AI Attention (Autopilot, Oct 4, 2026)", "url": "https://www.autopilotbrand.com/post/ai-attention-comes-first" } ], "lastVerified": "2026-10-08" }, { "name": "Perplexity", "operator": "Perplexity AI", "url": "https://www.autopilotbrand.com/resources/ai-shopping-assistants#perplexity", "documentationLevel": "partial", "summary": "Perplexity's shopping answers and Instant Buy have been free for US users since November 25, 2025, except on Enterprise plans. It gets merchant product data through its Merchant Program, which has no published feed specification, through catalogs synced by PayPal Store Sync, and from reviews across the open web; Instant Buy, paid through PayPal, is limited to compatible merchants and categories.", "usStatus": "Free for US users, except Enterprise plans", "documentedProductDataSources": "Merchant Program, PayPal Store Sync catalogs, open-web reviews", "buysForShopper": "Yes: Instant Buy, select merchants and categories", "attributes": { "Price": "supported", "Availability": "supported", "GTIN": "not-documented", "Brand": "not-documented", "Title": "not-documented", "Description": "not-documented", "Attributes": "supported", "Variants": "not-documented", "Images": "not-documented", "Category": "supported", "Shipping": "supported", "Returns": "not-documented", "Reviews": "supported", "Checkout flag": "not-documented" }, "details": { "US status": "Shopping and Instant Buy are free for US consumer accounts; Enterprise plans are excluded. At launch the free features were on Perplexity's desktop app and website, with its mobile apps to follow. The Comet browser has been free on desktop since October 2, 2025. No shopping launch outside the US was found.", "Documentation": "Partial. Perplexity documents ranking signals and checkout terms but publishes no feed format, schema or acceptance criteria for merchants.", "Product data sources": "The Perplexity Merchant Program, joined through an interest form; PayPal Store Sync catalogs, reachable through connectors such as Wix, Cymbio, BigCommerce with Feedonomics, and Shopware; reviews analyzed across multiple sites; pages the Comet Assistant reads in the user's own logged-in desktop browser session (on iOS, some tasks run in a Perplexity-hosted cloud browser, per press). A Shopify integration announced in 2024 is not listed in Shopify's 2026 channel documentation.", "Attributes documented": "Perplexity documents signals rather than fields: merchants that share pricing details, availability and product specifications are more likely to be recommended, and listings are ranked on relevance and ratings. Instant Buy is limited to certain categories. Shipping is included in the amount charged and the merchant's return policy applies.", "How products get in": "Submit the Merchant Program interest form, or sync a catalog through PayPal Store Sync, which accepts the Google, OpenAI or PayPal feed formats and is available by request. Public pages are reachable through PerplexityBot, the indexing crawler, and Perplexity-User, which fetches on a user's request.", "What it can do": "Recommends products in listings Perplexity says are not sponsored. Instant Buy completes purchases through PayPal with the retailer as merchant of record. The Comet Assistant can also buy on sites within the user's logged-in desktop session. Perplexity began phasing out advertising in late 2025 and had dropped it from its search platform by February 2026 (FT).", "Crawlers and access": "PerplexityBot indexes; Perplexity-User fetches on request. A preliminary injunction Amazon won against Comet on March 9, 2026 was vacated by the Ninth Circuit on August 4, 2026, and rehearing was denied on September 10; the case continues in district court.", "Conflicts in the documentation": "Perplexity's terms say it advances the funds and then debits the user, while its help center says payment goes directly to the merchant. The terms still describe shopping as a Pro feature." }, "sources": [ { "title": "What is Instant Buy (Perplexity Help)", "url": "https://www.perplexity.ai/help-center/en/articles/10352906-what-is-instant-buy" }, { "title": "Instant Buy with PayPal (Perplexity Help)", "url": "https://www.perplexity.ai/help-center/en/articles/12932923-instant-buy-buy-with-paypal" }, { "title": "Terms of Service, Section 10 (Perplexity)", "url": "https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/legal/terms-of-service" }, { "title": "Perplexity crawlers", "url": "https://docs.perplexity.ai/guides/bots" }, { "title": "Merchant Program interest form (Perplexity)", "url": "https://perplexity.typeform.com/to/oIcfT8U3" }, { "title": "PayPal and Perplexity launch Instant Buy (PayPal)", "url": "https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2025-11-PayPal-and-Perplexity-Launch-Instant-Buy" }, { "title": "PayPal agentic commerce services (PayPal)", "url": "https://developer.paypal.com/agentic-commerce-services/about" }, { "title": "Comet injunction vacated (MediaPost)", "url": "https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/417793/appeals-court-again-rejects-amazon-bid-to-block-pe.html" } ], "lastVerified": "2026-10-08" }, { "name": "Siri", "operator": "Apple", "url": "https://www.autopilotbrand.com/resources/ai-shopping-assistants#siri", "documentationLevel": "vague", "summary": "Apple has announced no shopping, product recommendation or checkout feature for Siri. Siri AI, released as a beta in English with iOS 27 on September 14, 2026, answers world-knowledge questions with context from Applebot-crawled web data, and Apple's shopping-adjacent features reach products through third-party apps, Visual Intelligence image search and Safari price and restock alerts.", "usStatus": "Siri AI in beta; no shopping feature announced", "documentedProductDataSources": "Applebot crawl, App Intents, Visual Intelligence", "buysForShopper": "No", "attributes": { "Price": "not-documented", "Availability": "not-documented", "GTIN": "not-documented", "Brand": "not-documented", "Title": "supported", "Description": "supported", "Attributes": "no-field", "Variants": "not-documented", "Images": "supported", "Category": "not-documented", "Shipping": "not-documented", "Returns": "not-documented", "Reviews": "not-documented", "Checkout flag": "not-applicable" }, "details": { "US status": "Siri AI is a beta in English, with five more languages due in October 2026 per Apple, and a waitlist, on devices that support Apple Intelligence. Apple plans a fee for expanded access to server-side features. In the US, shopping-adjacent features include Visual Intelligence image search, Safari's Notify Me alerts for price drops and restocks, and order tracking in Wallet.", "Documentation": "Vague. Apple documents Applebot and the App Intents interfaces but has no product feed, merchant program or shopping documentation for Siri.", "Product data sources": "Applebot-crawled web data, which Apple says provides context for Siri's world-knowledge answers; third-party app content exposed through App Intents and the Spotlight index; Visual Intelligence image search, which sends images to Google and to apps that support it (Apple names Google and Etsy, and its iOS 27 App Store story also names Daydream, which announced support on September 30, 2026); order details from Wallet integrations and, with consent, from Mail.", "Attributes documented": "Titles and descriptions from Applebot-crawled pages; nosnippet removes the description and web answer, leaving only the title, and keeps the page out of AI context, as does isAccessibleForFree false. Apps supply a title, subtitle and image for Visual Intelligence results. No current Apple document names a price, availability or identifier field; an archived 2016 Applebot guide listed schema.org Offers and PriceRange.", "How products get in": "There is no feed or merchant program. Brands can allow Applebot; Applebot-Extended controls only model training and, per Apple, is not considered in Search ranking. Apps can adopt the App Intents and Visual Intelligence interfaces.", "What it can do": "No native recommendation or purchase feature is announced. Glance and Daydream announced shopping inside Siri AI on September 30, 2026, in their own press releases; Apple has not announced a shopping feature for Siri itself.", "Crawlers and access": "Applebot, which Apple says powers search in Spotlight, Siri and Safari; Apple documents no separate user agent for Siri AI's live answers. Applebot-Extended is a robots.txt token that controls training use of Applebot data and does not crawl. Autopilot's Agentsite crawl figures (October 2026): an Apple crawler first appeared on August 21, 2026 and grew every week through early October; Apple does not document which of its features use that crawl." }, "sources": [ { "title": "About Applebot (Apple Support)", "url": "https://support.apple.com/en-us/119829" }, { "title": "Siri AI is here (Apple Newsroom)", "url": "https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/09/siri-ai-a-profoundly-more-capable-and-personal-assistant-is-here/" }, { "title": "App Intents, Apple Intelligence and Siri AI (Apple Developer)", "url": "https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appintents/apple-intelligence-and-siri-ai" }, { "title": "Integrating with Visual Intelligence (Apple Developer)", "url": "https://developer.apple.com/documentation/visualintelligence/integrating-your-app-with-visual-intelligence" }, { "title": "iOS 27 features (Apple)", "url": "https://www.apple.com/os/ios/" }, { "title": "Glance Siri AI integration (Business Wire, Sep 30, 2026)", "url": "https://www.webull.com/news/15667120985031680" }, { "title": "Daydream iOS 27 capabilities (PR Newswire, Sep 30, 2026)", "url": "https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/daydream-app-brings-conversational-support-and-visual-shopping-experiences-to-iphone-users-with-new-ios-27-capabilities-302893809.html" }, { "title": "Before AI Assistant Sales Comes AI Attention (Autopilot, Oct 4, 2026)", "url": "https://www.autopilotbrand.com/post/ai-attention-comes-first" } ], "lastVerified": "2026-10-08" }, { "name": "Sparky", "operator": "Walmart", "url": "https://www.autopilotbrand.com/resources/ai-shopping-assistants#sparky", "documentationLevel": "partial", "summary": "Sparky is Walmart's shopping assistant, live in the Walmart app since June 2025. It recommends only items in Walmart's catalog of first-party and Marketplace products, drawing on Walmart.com reviews, real-time inventory and the signed-in customer's purchase history; third parties also observe it citing brand websites and earned media. There is no Sparky-specific feed or enrollment: a product's way in is Walmart's catalog.", "usStatus": "Live in the Walmart app for signed-in US customers; walmart.com and stores per Walmart, reported by press", "documentedProductDataSources": "Walmart catalog, reviews, real-time inventory, purchase history", "buysForShopper": "Yes: Walmart checkout", "attributes": { "Price": "supported", "Availability": "supported", "GTIN": "not-documented", "Brand": "not-documented", "Title": "not-documented", "Description": "supported", "Attributes": "not-documented", "Variants": "not-documented", "Images": "not-documented", "Category": "not-documented", "Shipping": "supported", "Returns": "not-documented", "Reviews": "supported", "Checkout flag": "not-applicable" }, "details": { "US status": "US only, for signed-in customers, free. Walmart's help center still describes Sparky as app-only, while a Walmart executive said in May 2026, per press, that it is also live on walmart.com and in stores. A Sparky-powered Walmart app has run inside ChatGPT since about March 24, 2026. A Walmart experience in Gemini was announced on January 11, 2026, and no primary source yet confirms it is live.", "Documentation": "Partial. Walmart documents the categories of data Sparky uses but not how they are weighted, and does not document external sources.", "Product data sources": "Walmart's catalog of first-party and Marketplace items; Walmart.com customer reviews; real-time store and online inventory and fulfillment options; the customer's online and in-store purchase history, cart and membership; shopper photos for visual search. Third parties observe Sparky citing external sources such as brand websites and earned media; Walmart does not document this.", "Attributes documented": "Price, including member pricing; real-time availability; delivery speed and fulfillment options; product specifications; reviews. Identifiers, brand, variants and category are not documented for Sparky.", "How products get in": "There is no Sparky program, feed or protocol. Products become eligible by being in Walmart's US catalog, as a Marketplace listing or as a supplier item.", "What it can do": "Recommends, adds to cart and, per Walmart in September 2026, helps check out and handles customer service, all in Walmart's own checkout. The Walmart app in ChatGPT supports account linking, loyalty and Walmart payments. Walmart tested its first Sparky ad formats in fall 2025 and said in January 2026 that it would continue them; it has not published general availability, pricing or eligibility. Walmart's CEO wrote on September 25, 2026 that information shared with Sparky will not be used to raise prices.", "Crawlers and access": "No Sparky crawler or user agent is published.", "Conflicts in the documentation": "The help center describes Sparky as app-only, while a Walmart executive said in May 2026, per press, that it is live on walmart.com and in stores, and third-party trackers saw it on walmart.com from June 2026." }, "sources": [ { "title": "Sparky (Walmart Help)", "url": "https://www.walmart.com/help/article/sparky/c00bf20f6b154bc6b54837d8a02e3e82" }, { "title": "Goldman Sachs Global Retailing transcript, Sep 15, 2026 (Walmart)", "url": "https://corporate.walmart.com/content/dam/corporate/documents/newsroom/events/2026-goldman-sachs-global-retailing-conference/Walmart_Goldman_Sachs_Global_Retailing_2026_Corrected_Transcript.pdf" }, { "title": "A letter from our CEO (Walmart)", "url": "https://corporate.walmart.com/about/everyday-affordability/letter-from-our-ceo" }, { "title": "Walmart and Google (Walmart, Jan 11, 2026)", "url": "https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2026/01/11/walmart-and-google-turn-ai-discovery-into-effortless-shopping-experiences" }, { "title": "AI-powered retail media (Walmart Connect)", "url": "https://www.walmartconnect.com/resources/articles/2025/the-next-generation-of-ai-powered-retail-media" }, { "title": "Sparky on walmart.com and in stores (Digital Commerce 360)", "url": "https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2026/05/22/walmart-sparky-agent-ai-sales-supply-chain/" }, { "title": "Sparky replaces Instant Checkout in ChatGPT (Retail Dive)", "url": "https://www.retaildive.com/news/walmart-sparky-chatgpt-instant-checkout/815647/" } ], "lastVerified": "2026-10-08" }, { "name": "TikTok Shopping Assistant", "operator": "TikTok", "url": "https://www.autopilotbrand.com/resources/ai-shopping-assistants#tiktok-shopping-assistant", "documentationLevel": "partial", "summary": "TikTok announced its Shopping Assistant and one-click Buy Direct checkout on October 5, 2026, as eligibility-based tests arranged through TikTok sales partners. TikTok says the assistant answers from information provided by the merchant but does not specify the format or channel, and Buy Direct requires the merchant to integrate the Universal Commerce Protocol.", "usStatus": "Eligibility-based tests announced October 2026; US per Adweek, TikTok names no market", "documentedProductDataSources": "Merchant-provided information; UCP for Buy Direct", "buysForShopper": "Testing: Buy Direct", "attributes": { "Price": "not-documented", "Availability": "supported", "GTIN": "not-documented", "Brand": "not-documented", "Title": "not-documented", "Description": "supported", "Attributes": "not-documented", "Variants": "supported", "Images": "not-documented", "Category": "not-documented", "Shipping": "supported", "Returns": "not-documented", "Reviews": "not-documented", "Checkout flag": "not-documented" }, "details": { "US status": "TikTok's posts name no market, launch date, eligibility criteria or fee; the US was identified only in a reporter briefing (Adweek, October 5, 2026). Salesforce expects its UCP-based Buy Direct experiences to begin in the first quarter of 2027.", "Documentation": "Partial. TikTok documents the question types the assistant handles and the UCP requirement for Buy Direct, but not the product data format or channel.", "Product data sources": "Information provided by the merchant, format and channel unspecified. Buy Direct requires a UCP integration, but TikTok does not say which UCP capabilities, such as catalog or checkout, it uses. Salesforce, Shopify, Shoplazza and Stripe are named as partners; Salesforce promises Commerce Cloud merchants a central place to send their catalog, without naming the mechanism. TikTok does not say whether its ads catalog or TikTok Shop listings feed the assistant.", "Attributes documented": "The assistant answers questions about product details, shipping, sizing and availability. No field specification is published.", "How products get in": "TikTok publishes no self-serve path. Advertisers contact their TikTok sales partner about eligibility, and Buy Direct additionally requires a UCP integration.", "What it can do": "Answers product questions and recommends inside a conversation. Buy Direct completes one-click purchases with stored payment methods and saved addresses, with the brand as merchant of record and in-app order tracking. No fee or take rate is published.", "Crawlers and access": "No crawler is tied to the Shopping Assistant: ByteDance operates the Bytespider crawler, but TikTok does not document it as a data source for the assistant. Autopilot's Agentsite crawl figures (October 2026): a ByteDance crawler began fetching the sites in September 2026; TikTok does not document reading them. Accounts listing TikTok as their company have filed proposals and pull requests to the UCP specification since August 2026.", "Conflicts in the documentation": "For the Shopping Assistant, TikTok's business blog says shoppers continue to checkout on the merchant's site inside TikTok's in-app browser, while its newsroom describes guidance on product details, shipping, sizing, availability and purchasing all within one conversation." }, "sources": [ { "title": "TikTok agentic solutions (TikTok for Business, Oct 5, 2026)", "url": "https://ads.tiktok.com/business/en-US/blog/tiktok-agentic-solutions" }, { "title": "Commerce Cloud and TikTok (Salesforce)", "url": "https://www.salesforce.com/blog/commerce-cloud-tiktok-integration/" }, { "title": "TikTok Shopping Assistant (TechCrunch, Oct 5, 2026)", "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/05/tiktok-rolls-out-an-ai-shopping-assistant-and-one-click-checkout/" }, { "title": "Universal Commerce Protocol", "url": "https://ucp.dev/" }, { "title": "UCP Shopping Tech Council minutes, Oct 2, 2026", "url": "https://github.com/Universal-Commerce-Protocol/meeting-minutes/blob/main/tc/shopping/2026/2026-10-02.md" }, { "title": "TikTok adds an AI shopping assistant (Adweek, Oct 5, 2026)", "url": "https://www.adweek.com/commerce/tiktok-adds-an-ai-shopping-assistant-and-lets-users-buy-direct-from-brands/" }, { "title": "Before AI Assistant Sales Comes AI Attention (Autopilot, Oct 4, 2026)", "url": "https://www.autopilotbrand.com/post/ai-attention-comes-first" } ], "lastVerified": "2026-10-08" } ], "queuedAssistants": [ { "name": "Ask Blue", "operator": "Best Buy", "summary": "Conversational shopping and support assistant in a phased rollout, announced on Best Buy's August 27, 2026 earnings call (press); market and channels not stated.", "source": [ "https://www.retaildive.com/news/best-buy-ai-shopping-assistant/829049/" ] }, { "name": "Clementine", "operator": "Instacart", "summary": "Grocery assistant that turns a request, list or recipe into a cart from items in stock at the selected store; introduced September 9, 2026 for most US and Canadian Instacart customers in the app and on the web. It follows an assistant Instacart rolled out to millions of US customers in June 2026; Cart Assistant is now the name of Instacart's white-label assistant for grocers' own sites.", "source": [ "https://s25.q4cdn.com/251036341/files/doc_news/Meet-Clementine-Instacarts-AI-Shopping-Assistant-That-Takes-Whats-for-Dinner-Off-Your-Plate-2026.pdf", "https://company.instacart.com/updates/instacarts-ai-assistant-powered-by-14-years-of-grocery-expertise" ] }, { "name": "Daydream", "operator": "Daydream", "summary": "Fashion shopping agent on web and iOS; brands apply on its partner site to onboard product catalogs; geography not stated.", "source": [ "https://daydream.ing/", "https://partners.daydream.ing/" ] }, { "name": "Go", "operator": "Gopuff, with SpaceXAI (xAI)", "summary": "In-app shopping assistant that suggests a cart when the app opens, with one-tap checkout for returning customers, launched June 3, 2026; the US launch is stated in an xAI post and press, not in Gopuff's post.", "source": [ "https://www.gopuff.com/newsroom/company-news/gopuff-and-spacexai-launch-go-an-ai-powered-personal-shopping-genius-that-predicts-and-delivers-orders-in-minute", "https://x.ai/news/grok-gopuff" ] }, { "name": "Pinterest Assistant", "operator": "Pinterest", "summary": "Visual, voice or text assistant with shoppable recommendations, launched as a US beta for users 18 and older on October 30, 2025.", "source": [ "https://newsroom.pinterest.com/news/pinterest-assistant-revolutionizing-the-way-you-shop-online/" ] }, { "name": "Wizard", "operator": "Wizard", "summary": "Standalone shopping agent that searches, compares and checks out for consumers, publicly debuted February 11, 2026 with an initial Best Buy collaboration; access is through a beta sign-up and no market is stated.", "source": [ "https://wizard.com/press/2026-02-11-nrf-wizard-debuts-ai-native-shopping-agent-teams-with-best-buy" ] } ], "surfaces": [ { "surface": "Brand and merchant product pages", "description": "Public product, policy and review pages read by an assistant's search crawler or fetched on request. Controlled per crawler through robots.txt and snippet directives, though user-initiated fetchers such as ChatGPT-User and Perplexity-User may not follow robots.txt.", "readBy": [ { "assistant": "ChatGPT", "basis": "Documented: OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User" }, { "assistant": "Gemini and AI Mode", "basis": "Documented: Googlebot index and Merchant Center crawl" }, { "assistant": "Copilot", "basis": "Documented: Bing index" }, { "assistant": "Claude", "basis": "Documented: Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User" }, { "assistant": "Siri", "basis": "Documented: Applebot, for world-knowledge answers" }, { "assistant": "Alexa for Shopping", "basis": "Documented for Shop Direct: public merchant websites" }, { "assistant": "Perplexity", "basis": "Documented: reviews across sites; use of the PerplexityBot index for product results is inferred" }, { "assistant": "Sparky", "basis": "Observed by third parties: cites brand websites" } ] }, { "surface": "schema.org Product markup", "description": "On-page Product and Offer structured data in JSON-LD, RDFa or Microdata.", "readBy": [ { "assistant": "Gemini and AI Mode", "basis": "Documented: merchant listings and Merchant Center automatic item updates; no special markup needed for AI features" }, { "assistant": "Copilot", "basis": "Documented: recommended so feed price and availability match the page" }, { "assistant": "Others", "basis": "Not documented" } ] }, { "surface": "llms.txt", "description": "A markdown index at /llms.txt, proposed in 2024 and revised in August 2026. Shopify stores checked for this page serve an identical templated version, which Shopify has not documented.", "readBy": [ { "assistant": "Gemini and AI Mode", "basis": "Documented as not needed" }, { "assistant": "All others", "basis": "Not documented for shopping" } ] }, { "surface": "Agentsites (agentsite.network) and other machine-readable catalogs", "description": "Intermediary catalogs that expose products in agent-readable form, as public pages or an MCP server. Agentsites are machine-readable product sites built and hosted by Everything Machines on agentsite.network, meant to be linked from the brand's own domain, with product data drawn from the brand's site, product information systems and marketplace listings such as Amazon. Klarna's Product Search is a multi-merchant catalog exposed as an MCP server. Disclosure: Autopilot, which publishes this page, supplies product data to the Agentsites of brands it works with, as a partner of Everything Machines.", "readBy": [ { "assistant": "OpenAI, Meta, Anthropic, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Google and Baidu crawlers", "basis": "Observed on Agentsites: crawler hit counts for the Agentsites of nine brands, summarized by Autopilot in October 2026. Crawling alone does not show use in shopping answers, and no operator documents Agentsites as a source; the only crawler the figures name, ClaudeBot, is Anthropic's training crawler" }, { "assistant": "ChatGPT", "basis": "Documented by Klarna: Shopping Search app powered by Klarna's Product Search MCP server" } ] }, { "surface": "Shopify Catalog and Agentic Storefronts", "description": "A structured catalog built from Shopify merchants' product data and shared with AI channels, on by default for eligible stores, with per-channel opt-out under Sales channels, then Agentic.", "readBy": [ { "assistant": "ChatGPT", "basis": "Documented" }, { "assistant": "Copilot", "basis": "Documented" }, { "assistant": "Muse", "basis": "Documented, with conflicting Shopify pages" }, { "assistant": "Gemini and AI Mode", "basis": "Documented for checkout; discovery runs through Merchant Center" }, { "assistant": "Instinct", "basis": "Partnership announced; path not documented" }, { "assistant": "Claude", "basis": "Not a listed channel" } ] }, { "surface": "Google Merchant Center and the Shopping Graph", "description": "Merchant Center feeds, Manufacturer Center and Merchant Center's site crawl, combined into the Shopping Graph. Other programs also accept Google's feed format.", "readBy": [ { "assistant": "Gemini and AI Mode", "basis": "Documented" }, { "assistant": "ChatGPT", "basis": "Documented: Google-compatible feeds accepted, search only" }, { "assistant": "Copilot", "basis": "Documented: Microsoft Merchant Center imports Google feeds" }, { "assistant": "Perplexity", "basis": "Documented: PayPal Store Sync accepts Google's format" } ] }, { "surface": "Microsoft Merchant Center", "description": "Microsoft's feed and Content API, with UCP store settings for Copilot Checkout available to beta participants.", "readBy": [ { "assistant": "Copilot", "basis": "Documented: required for Copilot Checkout except for Shopify merchants" } ] }, { "surface": "Merchant feeds under OpenAI's specification", "description": "OpenAI's product feed, by file upload or Feeds API, and the Agentic Commerce Protocol feed.", "readBy": [ { "assistant": "ChatGPT", "basis": "Documented: approved partners" }, { "assistant": "Perplexity and Copilot", "basis": "Documented by PayPal: Store Sync accepts the format" } ] }, { "surface": "Merchant endpoints under UCP", "description": "A merchant profile at /.well-known/ucp exposing checkout, cart, catalog, identity and order endpoints that agents call.", "readBy": [ { "assistant": "Gemini and AI Mode", "basis": "Documented: real-time price, stock and shipping at checkout" }, { "assistant": "Copilot", "basis": "Documented: UCP checkout pilot" }, { "assistant": "TikTok Shopping Assistant", "basis": "Documented: required for Buy Direct" } ] }, { "surface": "Payment-provider catalog sync", "description": "PayPal Store Sync and the Stripe Agentic Commerce Suite ingest merchant catalogs and forward them to connected assistants.", "readBy": [ { "assistant": "Perplexity", "basis": "Documented: PayPal Store Sync" }, { "assistant": "Copilot", "basis": "Documented: PayPal and Stripe" }, { "assistant": "ChatGPT", "basis": "Documented by OpenAI: Stripe and Salesforce as feed delivery paths" } ] }, { "surface": "Amazon catalog", "description": "Amazon's listings, reviews and Q&A. Amazon's robots.txt disallows most third-party AI crawlers.", "readBy": [ { "assistant": "Alexa for Shopping", "basis": "Documented" }, { "assistant": "ChatGPT", "basis": "Excluded from organic results: robots.txt disallows OpenAI's crawlers; Amazon-sold items can appear as ads through an Amazon DSP pilot for select US advertisers" }, { "assistant": "Claude", "basis": "Excluded: robots.txt disallows Anthropic's crawlers" }, { "assistant": "Muse", "basis": "Excluded: purchases blocked since September 20, 2026 (press)" }, { "assistant": "Perplexity", "basis": "Documented: Comet on desktop shops Amazon in the user's own session; an injunction against it was vacated and Amazon's lawsuit is pending" } ] }, { "surface": "Retailer and marketplace catalogs, apps and connectors", "description": "A retailer exposes its catalog, cart and checkout as an app or connector inside an assistant, or runs an assistant on its own catalog.", "readBy": [ { "assistant": "ChatGPT", "basis": "Documented: Walmart and Target apps; Instacart and Etsy apps per partner announcements and press; Klarna's multi-merchant search app per Klarna" }, { "assistant": "Claude", "basis": "Documented: Instacart and other connectors" }, { "assistant": "Muse", "basis": "Documented: connectors over API or MCP" }, { "assistant": "Siri", "basis": "Documented: App Intents" }, { "assistant": "Sparky", "basis": "Documented: Walmart's own catalog" } ] }, { "surface": "Agent browsing in the user's session", "description": "An agent operates a browser with the user's credentials and reads pages as rendered.", "readBy": [ { "assistant": "Muse", "basis": "Documented: browser in a secure virtual machine" }, { "assistant": "Instinct", "basis": "Partially documented" }, { "assistant": "Perplexity", "basis": "Documented: Comet Assistant" }, { "assistant": "Claude", "basis": "Documented: Claude in Chrome, purchases prohibited" }, { "assistant": "Alexa for Shopping", "basis": "Documented: Buy for Me checkout on brand sites" } ] }, { "surface": "Reviews and user-generated content", "description": "Customer reviews, review publications, forums and Q&A used for summaries and ranking.", "readBy": [ { "assistant": "ChatGPT", "basis": "Documented: public review websites" }, { "assistant": "Gemini and AI Mode", "basis": "Documented: Product Ratings program" }, { "assistant": "Perplexity", "basis": "Documented: ratings and reviews across sites" }, { "assistant": "Alexa for Shopping", "basis": "Documented: Amazon reviews and Q&A" }, { "assistant": "Sparky", "basis": "Documented: Walmart.com reviews" }, { "assistant": "Copilot", "basis": "Shown; source not documented" } ] }, { "surface": "Shopper's own data", "description": "Purchase history, memory, accounts and connected email used to personalize results.", "readBy": [ { "assistant": "Alexa for Shopping", "basis": "Documented" }, { "assistant": "Sparky", "basis": "Documented" }, { "assistant": "Instinct", "basis": "Documented" }, { "assistant": "Muse", "basis": "Documented: Facebook, Instagram and Threads" }, { "assistant": "Gemini and AI Mode", "basis": "Documented: loyalty through UCP identity linking" } ] }, { "surface": "Ads-only feeds and sponsored placements", "description": "Advertiser feeds or campaigns that surface products as labeled ads, separate from organic results.", "readBy": [ { "assistant": "ChatGPT", "basis": "Documented: Ads Manager product feeds, in beta" }, { "assistant": "Alexa for Shopping", "basis": "Documented: sponsored ads and prompts" }, { "assistant": "Gemini and AI Mode", "basis": "Documented: Sponsored, in testing" }, { "assistant": "Copilot", "basis": "Documented: sponsored results" }, { "assistant": "Sparky", "basis": "Documented: ad formats in testing" } ] } ], "rails": [ { "name": "Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)", "operator": "Open standard co-developed by Google and Shopify", "description": "Covers discovery through post-purchase. The merchant publishes a profile at /.well-known/ucp listing checkout, cart, catalog, identity linking and order capabilities; agent and merchant negotiate what both support.", "productFields": "Defined by capability; on Google, product data comes from the Merchant Center feed, and checkout needs the native_commerce checkout eligibility attribute.", "usedBy": "Gemini and AI Mode, Copilot (pilot), TikTok Buy Direct, Shopify checkout", "status": "Launched January 11, 2026; Google checkout rolling out since February 11, 2026, in early access for products sold in the US", "url": "https://ucp.dev/" }, { "name": "Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)", "operator": "OpenAI and Stripe", "description": "Open specification for product feeds, carts, checkout, orders and payment. Version 2026-04-17 added a push-model feed API and an MCP binding.", "productFields": "OpenAI feed required fields: item ID, title, description, URL, brand, seller name, image URL, availability, price.", "usedBy": "ChatGPT feeds and partner checkout, Stripe Agentic Commerce Suite, PayPal Store Sync", "status": "In beta; latest version 2026-04-17", "url": "https://www.agenticcommerce.dev" }, { "name": "Model Context Protocol (MCP)", "operator": "Linux Foundation project", "description": "Generic protocol through which assistants call tools and data on a server. It defines no product schema; commerce fields come from UCP or ACP payloads carried over it.", "productFields": "None of its own.", "usedBy": "ChatGPT apps, Claude connectors, Muse connectors, Shopify catalog and checkout servers", "status": "Specification 2026-07-28", "url": "https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/latest" }, { "name": "Shopify Catalog and Agentic Storefronts", "operator": "Shopify", "description": "Builds a catalog from Shopify product data with no separate feed and shares it with AI channels, on by default for eligible stores, with per-channel opt-out.", "productFields": "Product title, description, URL, categories, price range, media, options, variants and rating.", "usedBy": "ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Mode, Copilot, Muse", "status": "Live", "url": "https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/online-sales-channels/agentic-storefronts" }, { "name": "Google Merchant Center", "operator": "Google", "description": "The product source for Google's AI shopping surfaces and UCP checkout. Conversational attributes for AI Mode and Gemini became available to retailers globally on May 20, 2026; AI performance insights became generally available in the US on September 16, 2026.", "productFields": "Required: ID, title, description, link, image link, price, availability; brand for new products; MPN when there is no GTIN. GTIN is strongly recommended.", "usedBy": "Gemini and AI Mode; Microsoft and PayPal accept its format, OpenAI accepts it for search only after confirming the feed, and Stripe's catalog CSV uses Google-style fields", "status": "Live", "url": "https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/7052112" }, { "name": "schema.org Product markup", "operator": "schema.org vocabulary", "description": "On-page Product and Offer data. Google uses it for merchant listings and states that no special markup is needed for AI Overviews or AI Mode.", "productFields": "Google merchant listing: name, image, offers with price and currency.", "usedBy": "Google documents use; Microsoft Merchant Center recommends markup so feed prices match the page; other assistants do not document it", "status": "Stable", "url": "https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/merchant-listing" }, { "name": "llms.txt", "operator": "Community proposal", "description": "A markdown index of a site's content at /llms.txt. No assistant documents reading it for shopping, and Google states such files are not needed.", "productFields": "None defined.", "usedBy": "Not documented for shopping", "status": "Proposal; version 2 revised August 10, 2026", "url": "https://llmstxt.org/" }, { "name": "Stripe Agentic Commerce Suite", "operator": "Stripe", "description": "Takes a merchant catalog upload, converts it to each agent's format and processes agent payments over UCP or ACP.", "productFields": "Required: ID, title, description, link, image link, price, availability; brand for most products; plus conditional fields including MPN when GTIN is missing, a product category, shipping, inventory quantity and a tax code.", "usedBy": "Copilot; Stripe names partnerships with Google, OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta", "status": "Live for sellers in the US, Canada and select European countries", "url": "https://docs.stripe.com/agentic-commerce/sellers/use-cases/retail" }, { "name": "Stripe Link agent wallet", "operator": "Stripe", "description": "Issues a one-time-use payment credential per purchase the customer approves, so the agent never holds card details.", "productFields": "Not a catalog rail.", "usedBy": "Muse, Instinct", "status": "Live for US and Canadian customers", "url": "https://docs.stripe.com/agentic-commerce/agents/link-agent-wallet" }, { "name": "Shop Pay for agents", "operator": "Shopify", "description": "Shop Pay and Shop identity offered as payment and login handlers in Shopify stores' UCP profiles.", "productFields": "Not a catalog rail.", "usedBy": "Muse (reported), Instinct", "status": "Observed in live UCP profiles; no program terms published", "url": "https://shop.com/SKILL.md" }, { "name": "PayPal agentic commerce services", "operator": "PayPal", "description": "Store Sync makes a merchant catalog discoverable by AI assistants and routes orders to the merchant; Agent Ready handles payment.", "productFields": "Accepts Google, OpenAI or PayPal feed formats; refreshed at least daily.", "usedBy": "Perplexity and Copilot, for catalog sync and checkout, per PayPal. PayPal also documents payment paths for ChatGPT over ACP and for Gemini and AI Mode over UCP; OpenAI lists PayPal only as a payment provider in a private beta, and Google has not confirmed PayPal live", "status": "Live by request", "url": "https://developer.paypal.com/agentic-commerce-services/about" }, { "name": "Visa Intelligent Commerce", "operator": "Visa", "description": "Agent-specific payment tokens and a Trusted Agent Protocol that lets merchants distinguish trusted agents from bots.", "productFields": "None.", "usedBy": "OpenAI named as a partner", "status": "In development and deployment, per Visa", "url": "https://developer.visa.com/capabilities/visa-intelligent-commerce" }, { "name": "Mastercard Agent Pay", "operator": "Mastercard", "description": "Agentic tokens for registered agents, with requests signed under Web Bot Auth.", "productFields": "None.", "usedBy": "Certified agents, not named", "status": "Live transactions in markets including Thailand and Latin America, per Mastercard; a US rollout to all cardholders announced in September 2025 has not been verified", "url": "https://developer.mastercard.com/merchant-cloud/documentation/tutorials-and-guides/agentic-commerce-guide/" } ], "observedCrawling": { "source": { "title": "Before AI Assistant Sales Comes AI Attention", "url": "https://www.autopilotbrand.com/post/ai-attention-comes-first", "published": "2026-10-04", "basis": "Crawler hit counts for the Agentsites of nine brands on agentsite.network, June to early October 2026, from logs kept by Everything Machines; the logs are not public. This tracker adds no unpublished numbers.", "disclosure": "Autopilot, which publishes this dataset, supplies product data to Agentsites as a partner of Everything Machines, which builds and hosts them, so this sample is not independent of the publisher." }, "aggregate": [ { "fact": "Every Agentsite in the nine-brand sample was crawled by OpenAI or Meta within a week of going live in early June 2026." }, { "fact": "Weekly AI-crawler hits across the sites peaked at 108,000 in the week of June 22, 2026." }, { "fact": "521,000 crawler hits in 18 weeks across all nine sites. The five sites connected to their brands' domains at launch drew 314,000 hits in the twelve weeks from mid-July, while two never-connected sites drew 153; the post does not say how the two groups otherwise differed." }, { "fact": "In June the three AI labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta) were 99.8% of the crawl; by September they were 48%, with Apple, ByteDance, Baidu, Amazon and Google making up the rest." }, { "fact": "In the most recent week reported, Apple and ByteDance together made 21,000 hits, 62% of all crawler activity." } ], "operators": [ { "operator": "OpenAI", "firstObserved": "June 2026 (launch week)", "pattern": "Has crawled the sites continuously since launch", "assistant": "ChatGPT" }, { "operator": "Meta", "firstObserved": "June 2026", "pattern": "Largest crawler in June and early July, then quiet; the post reports it returned in the week of September 7, 2026. Meta launched Muse on September 8 and does not document which crawler, if any, feeds Muse", "assistant": "Muse" }, { "operator": "Anthropic", "firstObserved": "June 2026", "pattern": "ClaudeBot, which Anthropic documents as its training crawler, arrives in large sweeps: 51,000 hits in one week in June and 44,000 in one week in August; second most active crawler overall", "assistant": "Claude" }, { "operator": "Amazon", "firstObserved": "August 21, 2026", "pattern": "Crawled every week since first appearing; the post attributes this, as an assumption, to personalization work behind Alexa for Shopping", "assistant": "Alexa for Shopping" }, { "operator": "Apple", "firstObserved": "August 21, 2026", "pattern": "Arrived the same day as Amazon and has grown every week since", "assistant": "Siri / Apple Intelligence (Apple has announced no native Siri shopping, recommendation or checkout feature)" }, { "operator": "ByteDance", "firstObserved": "September 2026", "pattern": "TikTok announced its Shopping Assistant on October 5, 2026, and does not document any ByteDance crawler as a Shopping Assistant data source", "assistant": "TikTok Shopping Assistant" }, { "operator": "Google", "firstObserved": "by September 2026", "pattern": "Present in the September operator mix", "assistant": "Gemini and AI Mode" }, { "operator": "Baidu", "firstObserved": "by September 2026", "pattern": "Present in the September operator mix; no Baidu assistant is tracked here", "assistant": "none tracked" } ] }, "changelog": [ { "date": "2026-10-05", "subject": "TikTok", "event": "TikTok unveils Agentic Commerce: Shopping Assistant (conversational, merchant-provided info) and Buy Direct (one-click native checkout requiring a UCP integration).", "qualifier": "'Eligibility-based testing' via a TikTok sales partner. No market, date or fee is named; the US comes only from an Adweek briefing.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://ads.tiktok.com/business/en-US/blog/tiktok-agentic-solutions" }, { "date": "2026-10-05", "subject": "TikTok", "event": "Salesforce Commerce Cloud named as early partner: native UCP for Buy Direct and a catalog send for Shopping Assistant; TikTok Shop integration GA January 2027.", "qualifier": "UCP experiences are 'expected to begin in Q1 2027' (Salesforce only). Commerce Connect is tied explicitly to TikTok Shop, not to Shopping Assistant.", "basis": "partner", "source": "https://www.salesforce.com/blog/commerce-cloud-tiktok-integration/" }, { "date": "2026-10-03", "subject": "Muse", "event": "CNBC walkthrough: Muse browses retail sites and shows an approval card before purchase. Link and Shop Pay must be connected; PayPal announced but 'isn't available yet'.", "qualifier": "Reported by CNBC on October 3, 2026.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/03/meta-muse-shopping-ai-agent.html" }, { "date": "2026-10-02", "subject": "Gemini and AI Mode", "event": "Merchant Center UCP integration hub developer page updated: still an early access program, products sold within the United States.", "qualifier": "Google's help article on UCP-powered checkout names product eligibility in the US, Canada and Australia.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://developers.google.com/merchant/ucp/guides/tools/merchant-center/overview" }, { "date": "2026-10-02", "subject": "UCP, TikTok", "event": "UCP Shopping Tech Council minutes list open PRs 'including contributions from TikTok'.", "qualifier": "TikTok is not listed as a UCP co-developer or endorser on ucp.dev.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://github.com/Universal-Commerce-Protocol/meeting-minutes/blob/main/tc/shopping/2026/2026-10-02.md" }, { "date": "2026-10-01", "subject": "ChatGPT", "event": "'New ways to shop in ChatGPT': virtual try-on (ChatGPT Images) and Favorites with folders in Library.", "qualifier": "Mobile and web; no plan or region qualifier stated.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6825453-chatgpt-release-notes" }, { "date": "2026-09-30", "subject": "Siri", "event": "Glance (Business Wire) and Daydream (PR Newswire) announce shopping inside Siri AI on iOS 27; Daydream also announces Visual Intelligence support.", "qualifier": "Apple has not announced a native Siri shopping feature, although its own iOS 27 App Store story lists Daydream as a Visual Intelligence app.", "basis": "partner", "source": "https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/daydream-app-brings-conversational-support-and-visual-shopping-experiences-to-iphone-users-with-new-ios-27-capabilities-302893809.html" }, { "date": "2026-09-30", "subject": "Instinct", "event": "TechCrunch reports Selections recommendations arriving unsolicited.", "qualifier": "Instinct did not say whether it earns money on picks.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/30/instincts-new-product-recommendations-are-giving-some-users-the-ick/" }, { "date": "2026-09-29", "subject": "Alexa for Shopping", "event": "Branded Conversations announced: brand-provided expertise in Alexa for Shopping, labeled Sponsored.", "qualifier": "Launches January 2027 in the United States.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://advertising.amazon.com/library/news/branded-conversations-review-requests" }, { "date": "2026-09-29", "subject": "Muse", "event": "Muse for Small Business adds connectors (Shopify, Stripe, QuickBooks, Klaviyo, Facebook and Instagram business accounts and others); partners apply at muse.ai/platform.", "qualifier": "Available where Muse is (US and Canada).", "basis": "official", "source": "https://about.fb.com/news/2026/09/introducing-muse-small-business/" }, { "date": "2026-09-29", "subject": "Instinct", "event": "Instinct Selections: human-curated dining, travel, home and shopping picks.", "qualifier": "Early access program; curators unnamed.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://x.com/noahrshinn/status/2105078482581774818" }, { "date": "2026-09-29", "subject": "Copilot", "event": "Retired consumer Copilot features (Group Chat, Podcasts, Deep Research, Mico, Copilot Labs) after consumer Copilot merged into the Microsoft 365 Copilot app.", "qualifier": "No consumer-facing Microsoft source confirms that Copilot Shopping or Checkout survived the merger.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-copilot/frequently-asked-questions-about-retired-copilot-features" }, { "date": "2026-09-28", "subject": "Instinct", "event": "Shopify partnership: Instinct searches Shopify merchants for live prices, sizes and availability and sets up Shop Pay checkout. The same day Instinct raised a $1B Series C at a $10B valuation.", "qualifier": "Integration path not documented; funding as reported by press.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://x.com/noahrshinn/status/2104628465488306183" }, { "date": "2026-09-28", "subject": "Shopify", "event": "Shopify ships Checkout WebMCP tools (get_checkout, update_checkout, complete_checkout, navigate_to_storefront) needing no merchant configuration.", "qualifier": "Uses saved Shop Pay cards; the buyer approves before checkout completes.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://shopify.dev/changelog/webmcp-support-for-checkout" }, { "date": "2026-09-28", "subject": "Copilot", "event": "Shopware developer issue quotes Microsoft onboarding: Copilot Checkout is limited to English-language merchants selling to US buyers in USD.", "qualifier": "Merchant-side documentation, matching Microsoft's agentic commerce page; no consumer-facing Microsoft source confirms whether Checkout survived the merger.", "basis": "observed", "source": "https://github.com/shopware/agentic-commerce/issues/262" }, { "date": "2026-09-25", "subject": "Sparky", "event": "CEO letter: Walmart won't use information shared on Sparky to raise prices.", "qualifier": "", "basis": "official", "source": "https://corporate.walmart.com/about/everyday-affordability/letter-from-our-ceo" }, { "date": "2026-09-25", "subject": "Copilot", "event": "Microsoft unveils the new unified Copilot, merging consumer and Microsoft 365 Copilot.", "qualifier": "Shopping and Checkout status after the merger is unconfirmed.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://www.pymnts.com/news/artificial-intelligence/2026/microsoft-unifies-consumer-and-enterprise-copilot-in-push-for-single-ai-platform/" }, { "date": "2026-09-24", "subject": "Muse", "event": "Shop Pay reported live as a wallet in Muse (Shopify post on X).", "qualifier": "Meta's newsroom still calls Shop Pay 'coming soon'; Shopify help says 'including Muse when available'.", "basis": "observed", "source": "https://trucommerce.ai/insights/how-meta-muse-pays-link-shop-pay-agent-pay" }, { "date": "2026-09-23", "subject": "Muse", "event": "Meta Connect: Muse 'launched with dozens of partners along with access to the entire Shopify catalogue'. Meta is 'adding' Walmart, Best Buy, AEO, DICK'S, Fanatics, Gap, Michael Kors, Sephora, Ulta and Wayfair, with Expedia coming soon.", "qualifier": "Retailer connectors are being added and no per-partner dates are given; not all connectors are active. Zuckerberg's 'small fee from transactions' quote comes from TechCrunch.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://www.meta.com/blog/meta-connect-2026-everything-we-announced/" }, { "date": "2026-09-23", "subject": "Muse", "event": "Insurify blocks Muse from its insurance marketplace.", "qualifier": "Insurify supports agent access through its own APIs and MCP.", "basis": "other", "source": "https://insurify.com/press/news/insurify-blocks-muse-from-its-marketplace/" }, { "date": "2026-09-22", "subject": "Gemini and AI Mode", "event": "Eligible Shopify merchants get Merchant Center emails saying native checkout on AI Mode and Gemini is enabled automatically, with opt-out under Sales channels > Agentic.", "qualifier": "Per TechWyse, the feature is still early access and not available for all stores, and merchants must be US-based and sell to US customers.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://www.seroundtable.com/google-native-checkout-emails-42140.html" }, { "date": "2026-09-22", "subject": "Muse", "event": "PayPal posts on X about a partnership to let customers check out with Muse across PayPal merchants worldwide.", "qualifier": "Forward-looking ('Soon'); no newsroom release; not available as of Oct 3 per CNBC.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://www.pymnts.com/news/artificial-intelligence/2026/meta-adds-paypal-muse-ai-assistant-global-checkout/" }, { "date": "2026-09-22", "subject": "Muse, Instacart", "event": "Instacart says its connectors are available in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and AI Mode, and that it is coming to Muse.", "qualifier": "Muse availability is 'soon' with no date.", "basis": "partner", "source": "https://company.instacart.com/updates/instacart-to-bring-personalized-grocery-shopping-to-muse-from-meta" }, { "date": "2026-09-21", "subject": "Muse", "event": "Shopify CEO announces partnering 'to enable agentic checkout with Shop Pay on all Shopify stores'.", "qualifier": "Announced as forthcoming.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://www.pymnts.com/commerce/ecommerce/2026/shopify-brings-shop-pay-checkout-solution-to-metas-muse-ai-agent/" }, { "date": "2026-09-20", "subject": "Muse, Amazon", "event": "Amazon blocks Muse from ordering on Amazon.com with a Conditions-of-Use message about unauthorized AI agents.", "qualifier": "Reported by TechCrunch and GeekWire.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://ppc.land/amazon-blocks-metas-muse-ai-agent-from-shopping-on-its-site/" }, { "date": "2026-09-18", "subject": "Muse", "event": "Muse becomes available in Canada; Muse Connector Platform Terms take effect.", "qualifier": "Date as reported; Android access in Canada was still pending at that point.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/2026/09/18/metas-muse-ai-agent-is-now-available-in-canada/" }, { "date": "2026-09-16", "subject": "Gemini and AI Mode", "event": "Holiday updates: AI performance insights GA (AU, CA, IN, NZ, US); simplified UCP integration hub rolling out gradually in the US; Business Agent in YouTube ads beta (US).", "qualifier": "The UCP integration hub follows in Australia and Canada early next year, per Google.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/shopping/google-shopping-updates-holiday-shopping/" }, { "date": "2026-09-16", "subject": "Instinct", "event": "Concierge service for high-touch cases such as phone calls to businesses.", "qualifier": "Early access group only; described as 'white glove' and may involve human operators.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://x.com/noahrshinn/status/2100262985491231101" }, { "date": "2026-09-15", "subject": "Sparky", "event": "Walmart US CEO says Sparky can now help check out and handle customer service, offers visual (photo) shopping, and that frontier models 'most often' deep-link out to Walmart.", "qualifier": "", "basis": "official", "source": "https://corporate.walmart.com/content/dam/corporate/documents/newsroom/events/2026-goldman-sachs-global-retailing-conference/Walmart_Goldman_Sachs_Global_Retailing_2026_Corrected_Transcript.pdf" }, { "date": "2026-09-14", "subject": "Siri", "event": "iOS 27 released; Siri AI begins rolling out in beta in English, built with Google Gemini models.", "qualifier": "Beta with a waitlist. Not initially in the EU on iOS, iPadOS or watchOS, or in China. No Siri shopping feature announced.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/09/siri-ai-a-profoundly-more-capable-and-personal-assistant-is-here/" }, { "date": "2026-09-14", "subject": "ChatGPT", "event": "Best Buy says shoppers can find gifts and complete purchases directly in ChatGPT.", "qualifier": "Reported by Digital Commerce 360; whether through a feed or an app is not stated.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2026/09/16/best-buy-opens-up-gift-buying-and-discover-through-chatgpt-ahead-of-holidays/amp/" }, { "date": "2026-09-10", "subject": "ChatGPT, Amazon", "event": "Amazon DSP pilot lets select US advertisers buy ChatGPT ad inventory; per PYMNTS and Feedvisor, Amazon manages campaigns and OpenAI decides delivery.", "qualifier": "Ads only. Feedvisor says the pilot includes product-feed ads, so Amazon-sold products can appear as paid units.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://digiday.com/media-buying/amazon-brings-its-dsp-to-openais-chatgpt-ads-extending-its-supply-chasing-streak/" }, { "date": "2026-09-10", "subject": "Perplexity, Amazon", "event": "Ninth Circuit denies Amazon's rehearing petition; the Comet injunction stays vacated.", "qualifier": "The case continues in district court.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/417793/appeals-court-again-rejects-amazon-bid-to-block-pe.html" }, { "date": "2026-09-08", "subject": "Muse", "event": "Muse launches: personal AI agent with browser, Link by Stripe checkout, Shop Pay and 1Password 'coming soon'.", "qualifier": "Rolling out in the US on iOS, Android and muse.ai, and users can talk to Muse in WhatsApp; Muse's terms require users to be 18 or older.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://about.fb.com/news/2026/09/introducing-muse" }, { "date": "2026-09-08", "subject": "Muse, Shopify", "event": "Shopify adds Meta as an AI channel; products shared with Meta by default through Shopify Catalog.", "qualifier": "Other Shopify help pages say Meta discovery runs through the Facebook and Instagram sales channel.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://changelog.shopify.com/posts/meta-is-now-an-ai-channel-in-your-admin" }, { "date": "2026-09-08", "subject": "Muse, Instinct", "event": "Stripe says Link's agent wallet powers Muse for US consumers and also Grok Bot and Instinct.", "qualifier": "The US-consumer statement is specific to Muse.", "basis": "partner", "source": "https://stripe.com/newsroom/news/stripe-helps-meta-muse-shop-with-link" }, { "date": "2026-09-04", "subject": "Siri", "event": "Applebot page republished, adding that Applebot-Extended rules are not considered in Search ranking.", "qualifier": "", "basis": "official", "source": "https://support.apple.com/en-us/119829" }, { "date": "2026-09-04", "subject": "UCP, Shopify", "event": "Shopify storefronts support UCP 2026-08-25, effective Aug 28, 2026.", "qualifier": "2026-08-25 is the latest UCP version seen in live profiles.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://shopify.dev/changelog/posts/08-25-is-now-supported" }, { "date": "2026-09-02", "subject": "Claude", "event": "Claude Commerce Agents blueprint (Apache-2.0) released: shopping agent and merchant agent with checkout handoff and no payment method. Shopify publishes a UCP-based reference build.", "qualifier": "Reference code merchants deploy themselves; not a Claude.ai feature.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://claude.com/resources/articles/claude-for-commerce-agents" }, { "date": "2026-08-28", "subject": "Instinct", "event": "Stripe Link partnership: purchases paid with one-time virtual cards after the user approves each amount.", "qualifier": "For users with Link wallets.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://x.com/noahrshinn/status/2093368511003574730" }, { "date": "2026-08-27", "subject": "Best Buy Ask Blue", "event": "Best Buy's Ask Blue conversational shopping and support assistant begins a phased rollout (FY27 Q2 call).", "qualifier": "Press only; channel scope and completion timing undocumented.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://www.retaildive.com/news/best-buy-ai-shopping-assistant/829049/" }, { "date": "2026-08-26", "subject": "Instinct", "event": "Founder's launch post: invite-only beta; Terms and Privacy Policy were revised the same day and now include a training opt-out.", "qualifier": "SiliconANGLE reports a private beta since February 2026.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://x.com/noahrshinn/status/2092691344456351744" }, { "date": "2026-08-14", "subject": "Amazon", "event": "Amazon's Conditions of Use revised. Its Agent Terms, present since May 2025, require software acting on Amazon to identify as 'Agent/[agent name]', not to mimic humans or bypass CAPTCHAs, and to stop on request.", "qualifier": "Amazon may limit any agent by technical measures.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=508088" }, { "date": "2026-08-12", "subject": "Claude", "event": "Claude in Chrome permissions guide lists 'Making purchases or financial transactions' as prohibited regardless of permission mode.", "qualifier": "Paid plans only.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://support.claude.com/en/articles/12902446" }, { "date": "2026-08-11", "subject": "Claude", "event": "Interactive connectors help: 'Purchases through third-party interactive connectors are not supported.'", "qualifier": "Applies to MCP App connectors. Anthropic's Apr 23 post anticipates confirmed bookings and purchases through connectors.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://support.claude.com/en/articles/13454812-use-interactive-connectors-in-claude" }, { "date": "2026-08-10", "subject": "llms.txt", "event": "llms.txt proposal version 2 last modified.", "qualifier": "No assistant documents reading llms.txt for shopping; Google says such files are not needed for its AI features.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://llmstxt.org/" }, { "date": "2026-08-05", "subject": "Shopify", "event": "Shopify announces WebMCP tools on every Liquid storefront and the Hydrogen developer preview (catalog, cart, checkout handoff, order management and policy tools), with nothing for merchants to install or configure.", "qualifier": "Shopify says the tools were live when posted on Aug 5; the changelog lists Aug 21, 2026 as the effective date. Agent support is limited to Chromium-based browsers under an origin trial.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://shopify.dev/changelog/posts/webmcp-liquid-hydrogen" }, { "date": "2026-08-04", "subject": "Perplexity, Amazon", "event": "Ninth Circuit vacates Amazon's preliminary injunction against Comet: the user, not Perplexity, accesses Amazon's computers.", "qualifier": "Rehearing denied September 10, 2026.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://www.engadget.com/2230471/perplexity-has-successfully-overturned-amazon-injunction-on-its-ai-shopping-bot/" }, { "date": "2026-08-03", "subject": "TikTok, UCP", "event": "Accounts listing TikTok as their company file UCP proposals: seller.logo (#674, Aug 3), platform-funded discounts (#727, Aug 14), selected variant options (#750, Aug 19).", "qualifier": "Proposals, not merged spec. GitHub profiles list TikTok; related items #675 and #715 are PRs.", "basis": "other", "source": "https://github.com/Universal-Commerce-Protocol/ucp/issues/727" }, { "date": "2026-07-28", "subject": "MCP", "event": "Model Context Protocol specification version 2026-07-28.", "qualifier": "MCP defines no product schema; commerce fields come from UCP or ACP payloads.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/latest" }, { "date": "2026-07-08", "subject": "Claude", "event": "Third-party teardown finds Claude product image rows come from Bing-backed image search, with no price, stock, buy button or tracking tags.", "qualifier": "No Anthropic announcement.", "basis": "observed", "source": "https://rankly.substack.com/p/claudes-shopping-cards-arent-what" }, { "date": "2026-06-28", "subject": "eBay", "event": "eBay User Agreement version takes effect for existing users. Section 3 bars automated access, 'including, without limitation buy-for-me agents, LLM-driven bots, or any end-to-end flow that attempts to place orders without human review', except with eBay's prior express permission.", "qualifier": "The same language was already in the prior version, which took effect for existing users on February 20, 2026. eBay names no specific agent.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/member-behaviour-policies/user-agreement?id=4259" }, { "date": "2026-06-24", "subject": "ChatGPT", "event": "GPT-5.5 Instant updated to improve shopping and local recommendations.", "qualifier": "", "basis": "official", "source": "https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6825453-chatgpt-release-notes" }, { "date": "2026-06-23", "subject": "Alexa for Shopping", "event": "Alexa+ Agentic Ads on Echo Show: purchase completes inside the conversation (Papa Johns; Ticketmaster tickets).", "qualifier": "Few launch partners; Amazon plans to expand and states no country.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://advertising.amazon.com/library/news/alexa-agentic-ads" }, { "date": "2026-06-22", "subject": "Alexa for Shopping", "event": "Conversational display ads on the open web route shoppers into Alexa for Shopping conversations.", "qualifier": "", "basis": "press", "source": "https://www.ecomcrew.com/amazons-new-conversational-display-ads-let-shoppers-chat-with-alexa-from-any-website/" }, { "date": "2026-06-18", "subject": "Instacart", "event": "Instacart AI shopping assistant rolled out to millions of US customers, building carts from live store inventory.", "qualifier": "Canada planned in the coming months.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://company.instacart.com/updates/instacarts-ai-assistant-powered-by-14-years-of-grocery-expertise" }, { "date": "2026-06-16", "subject": "Claude", "event": "ReFiBuy/Retailgentic report Claude showing product cards across categories, first seen June 15.", "qualifier": "No Anthropic announcement; the cards are image-search rows.", "basis": "observed", "source": "https://www.retailgentic.com/p/breaking-claude-has-product-cards" }, { "date": "2026-06-11", "subject": "Alexa for Shopping", "event": "Amazon Ads: existing sponsored ads campaigns automatically eligible in Alexa for Shopping; Alexa+ Conversational Ads auto-enroll; Amazon MCP server for the Ads API.", "qualifier": "", "basis": "official", "source": "https://advertising.amazon.com/library/news/agentic-shopping-advertising" }, { "date": "2026-06-10", "subject": "PayPal", "event": "PayPal agentic commerce docs updated: Store Sync accepts Google, OpenAI ACP and PayPal Enhanced feed specs; Agent Ready supports ACP (ChatGPT) and UCP (AI Mode/Gemini).", "qualifier": "Access by request. Agent Ready needs a Braintree merchant account; its UCP path also needs Google Pay enabled in Braintree and UCP merchant registration with Google.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://developer.paypal.com/agentic-commerce-services/about" }, { "date": "2026-06-08", "subject": "Siri", "event": "WWDC26: Siri AI announced (beta later in the year, English); Safari Notify Me for restocks and price drops. Applebot page adds Siri 'broad world knowledge' context and nosnippet/isAccessibleForFree opt-outs.", "qualifier": "No shopping examples or retailers named.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/06/apple-unveils-next-generation-of-apple-intelligence-siri-ai-and-more/" }, { "date": "2026-06-03", "subject": "Gopuff Go", "event": "Gopuff and xAI launch Go, an in-app AI shopping assistant with predicted carts, Grok voice and one-tap checkout.", "qualifier": "US first, with the UK to follow, per xAI (Gopuff's post states no geography); no brand submission path documented.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://www.gopuff.com/newsroom/company-news/gopuff-and-spacexai-launch-go-an-ai-powered-personal-shopping-genius-that-predicts-and-delivers-orders-in-minute" }, { "date": "2026-05-21", "subject": "Sparky", "event": "Q1 FY27: Walmart says Sparky is live on walmart.com, in the app and in stores, supports Spanish and automatic reorders.", "qualifier": "Walmart's help center still describes Sparky as app-only. Press attributes the statement to Walmart US CEO David Guggina; third-party trackers first reported the broad walmart.com rollout around June 9 to 11.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2026/05/22/walmart-sparky-agent-ai-sales-supply-chain/" }, { "date": "2026-05-20", "subject": "Gemini and AI Mode", "event": "Google Marketing Live: conversational attributes usable by retailers globally; AI performance insights announced 'in the coming months'; UCP checkout in YouTube Shopping ads 'soon'.", "qualifier": "", "basis": "official", "source": "https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/shopping/shopping-updates-google-marketing-live" }, { "date": "2026-05-20", "subject": "ChatGPT", "event": "Klarna launches a Shopping Search app in ChatGPT, powered by its Product Search MCP server; purchases redirect to merchant sites.", "qualifier": "A ChatGPT surface; markets not specified.", "basis": "partner", "source": "https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260520024278/en/Klarna-launches-AI-powered-Shopping-Search-app-in-ChatGPT" }, { "date": "2026-05-19", "subject": "Gemini and AI Mode", "event": "Universal Cart announced: a cross-merchant cart with price and stock monitoring, Google Pay checkout or transfer to the merchant's site. Shopping Graph reported at more than 60B listings.", "qualifier": "US only, per Google Wallet help; YouTube and Gmail announced without a date.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/shopping/google-shopping-cart/" }, { "date": "2026-05-13", "subject": "Alexa for Shopping", "event": "Alexa for Shopping launches, combining Rufus and Alexa+; the Rufus page notes the rename.", "qualifier": "US; Amazon said it would roll out to all US customers over the following week; free when signed in.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/alexa-for-shopping-ai-assistant" }, { "date": "2026-05-11", "subject": "Copilot, Shopify", "event": "Shopify launches the Agentic Storefronts admin page listing ChatGPT, Shop and Copilot.", "qualifier": "", "basis": "official", "source": "https://shopify.dev/changelog/a-new-home-for-agentic-storefronts-in-your-admin" }, { "date": "2026-05-05", "subject": "ChatGPT", "event": "Etsy launches a beta @Etsy discovery app in ChatGPT (results open on Etsy) and a beta gifting assistant on etsy.com.", "qualifier": "Discovery and click-through only; Etsy's Instant Checkout program ended in March 2026.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/05/etsy-launches-its-app-within-chatgpt-as-it-continues-its-ai-push/" }, { "date": "2026-05-05", "subject": "Gemini and AI Mode", "event": "UCP 'Buy' button observed on a Wayfair free listing in standard Search results.", "qualifier": "Replicated by third parties; no Google announcement.", "basis": "observed", "source": "https://ppc.land/google-brings-ucp-checkout-out-of-ai-mode-into-main-search-results/" }, { "date": "2026-04-29", "subject": "Stripe", "event": "Stripe Sessions: Link wallet for agents (one-time-use cards or SPTs, per-purchase approval); Agentic Commerce Suite partnership to sell in Google AI Mode and Gemini.", "qualifier": "Link agent payments are for US and Canadian customers; Stripe does not publish the list of connectable agents.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://stripe.com/newsroom/news/sessions-2026" }, { "date": "2026-04-24", "subject": "UCP", "event": "UCP Tech Council expands to 16 seats, adding Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Stripe and Salesforce.", "qualifier": "A governance seat only; no Amazon commitment to expose its catalog or checkout through UCP.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://github.com/Universal-Commerce-Protocol/ucp/discussions/379" }, { "date": "2026-04-23", "subject": "Claude", "event": "Lifestyle connectors (Instacart, StubHub, Uber Eats, Booking.com, Resy and others). Anthropic says there are 'no paid placements or sponsored answers'. Instacart in Claude goes live for US users.", "qualifier": "Instacart carts sync to the user's Instacart account for ordering there; capabilities vary by connector.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://claude.com/blog/connectors-for-everyday-life" }, { "date": "2026-04-21", "subject": "Copilot", "event": "UCP-ready feeds GA in Microsoft Merchant Center for everyone in the US. Copilot Checkout extended to mobile apps. Target Circle loyalty linking. Shopify Catalog integrated.", "qualifier": "'Deepening catalog data to over 500,000 merchants' describes catalog coverage; the Merchant Center Checkout setting remains beta.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://about.ads.microsoft.com/en/blog/post/april-2026/win-across-all-three-eras-of-the-web" }, { "date": "2026-04-17", "subject": "ACP", "event": "Agentic Commerce Protocol spec 2026-04-17: cart, feed (push model), orders, authentication and an MCP binding.", "qualifier": "Latest stable release; the specification is in beta.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://github.com/agentic-commerce-protocol/agentic-commerce-protocol" }, { "date": "2026-04-15", "subject": "Claude", "event": "Anthropic Software Directory Policy dated: excludes connectors that execute financial transactions or serve ads or paid placements.", "qualifier": "'Unless otherwise expressly permitted by us in writing'.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://support.claude.com/en/articles/13145358-anthropic-software-directory-policy" }, { "date": "2026-03-25", "subject": "Alexa for Shopping", "event": "Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands prompts move to US general availability with CPC billing, auto-enrollment and per-prompt pause.", "qualifier": "Announced in an Amazon Ads note dated March 10, 2026. Prompts draw on detail pages, Brand Store and campaign data; no public rate card.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/unboxed-2025-sponsored-products-and-sponsored-brands-prompts" }, { "date": "2026-03-24", "subject": "ChatGPT", "event": "'Powering Product Discovery in ChatGPT': ACP extended to discovery via merchant feeds; Instant Checkout deprioritized; Shopify Catalog integrated; Walmart app in ChatGPT.", "qualifier": "Rolled out to Free, Go, Plus and Pro with no US qualifier in the post. The merchants page says shopping is live in the US.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://openai.com/index/powering-product-discovery-in-chatgpt/" }, { "date": "2026-03-24", "subject": "ChatGPT, Shopify", "event": "Shopify Agentic Storefronts: products discoverable in ChatGPT by default; purchase on the merchant's store in ChatGPT's in-app browser or a new tab; Shopify says UCP will soon power checkout in some Meta experiences.", "qualifier": "Merchant remains merchant of record; no fees beyond processing.", "basis": "partner", "source": "https://www.shopify.com/news/agentic-commerce-momentum" }, { "date": "2026-03-24", "subject": "Sparky", "event": "Sparky-powered Walmart app in ChatGPT launches with account linking, loyalty and Walmart payments; OpenAI Instant Checkout retired for Walmart.", "qualifier": "Web first, with iOS and Android to follow.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://www.retaildive.com/news/walmart-sparky-chatgpt-instant-checkout/815647/" }, { "date": "2026-03-20", "subject": "Sparky, ChatGPT", "event": "Walmart says in-ChatGPT Instant Checkout converted at about one-third the rate of click-outs.", "qualifier": "Attributed to Walmart's Daniel Danker by MarTech.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://martech.org/walmart-says-chatgpt-checkout-converted-3x-worse-than-its-own-website/" }, { "date": "2026-03-19", "subject": "Gemini and AI Mode", "event": "UCP adds Cart, Catalog (real-time product details 'where necessary') and Identity Linking; simplified Merchant Center onboarding announced.", "qualifier": "Google says AI Mode and Gemini discovery is powered by the Shopping Graph.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/shopping/ucp-updates/" }, { "date": "2026-03-16", "subject": "Perplexity", "event": "Ninth Circuit grants an administrative stay of the Comet injunction.", "qualifier": "Order dated March 16, reported March 17.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-17/judges-let-perplexity-ai-shopping-bots-stay-on-amazon-for-now" }, { "date": "2026-03-11", "subject": "Alexa for Shopping", "event": "Shop Direct expands: 100M+ products from 400,000+ merchants, feeds through Feedonomics, Salsify and CEDCommerce, merchant portal 'coming soon'.", "qualifier": "Amazon's post is undated; the date is from press. Public merchant website data is included by default, with opt-out by email.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-shop-direct-external-stores" }, { "date": "2026-03-09", "subject": "Perplexity, Amazon", "event": "Judge Chesney grants Amazon a preliminary injunction barring Comet from password-protected areas of Amazon.", "qualifier": "The judge stayed it for seven days; the Ninth Circuit vacated it on August 4, 2026.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/413382/judge-bans-perplexitys-shopping-agent-from-access.html" }, { "date": "2026-03-06", "subject": "ChatGPT", "event": "OpenAI spokesperson: Instant Checkout 'is moving to Apps'; priority on search and product discovery.", "qualifier": "OpenAI's own statement followed on March 24.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2026/03/06/openai-shifts-checkout-plans-agentic-commerce-strategy/" }, { "date": "2026-03-04", "subject": "Sparky", "event": "Walmart EVP Danker calls ChatGPT native checkout 'very temporary'; Sparky will take over the journey when a user taps a Walmart item in ChatGPT or Gemini.", "qualifier": "Future tense for Gemini.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://corporate.walmart.com/content/dam/corporate/documents/newsroom/events/2026-morgan-stanley-technology-media-telecom-conference/Walmart_MorganStanley_TMT_Conference_2026_Transcript.pdf" }, { "date": "2026-02-20", "subject": "Claude", "event": "Crawler help article revised to describe ClaudeBot, Claude-User and Claude-SearchBot separately.", "qualifier": "The current article is dated April 7, 2026.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://ppc.land/anthropic-clarifies-what-its-three-web-crawlers-do-and-how-to-block-them/" }, { "date": "2026-02-18", "subject": "Perplexity", "event": "FT, via The Decoder: Perplexity pulls advertising from its search platform, after starting to phase it out in late 2025.", "qualifier": "Perplexity had already said its product cards are not sponsored (2024 launch post).", "basis": "press", "source": "https://the-decoder.com/perplexity-pulls-advertising-from-its-search-engine-calling-itself-an-accuracy-business/" }, { "date": "2026-02-11", "subject": "Gemini and AI Mode", "event": "'UCP-powered checkout is rolling out now, letting US shoppers buy items from Etsy and Wayfair' in AI Mode and the Gemini app; Shopping ads in AI Mode in testing.", "qualifier": "Shopify, Target and Walmart 'coming soon' at that time.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/digital-advertising-commerce-2026/" }, { "date": "2026-02-11", "subject": "Wizard", "event": "Wizard (Marc Lore and Melissa Bridgeford) debuts an AI-native shopping agent with Best Buy as its first native checkout partner.", "qualifier": "Beta sign-up; geography not stated; product data source undocumented.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://wizard.com/press/2026-02-11-nrf-wizard-debuts-ai-native-shopping-agent-teams-with-best-buy" }, { "date": "2026-02-09", "subject": "ChatGPT", "event": "Ads test begins in the US for logged-in adults on Free and Go.", "qualifier": "Began with a subset of users and was gradual. Logged-out experiences now get all-audience ads.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6825453-chatgpt-release-notes" }, { "date": "2026-02-04", "subject": "Claude", "event": "'Claude is a space to think': ad-free pledge and stated interest in agentic commerce.", "qualifier": "Interest only; no commerce feature had shipped in Claude.ai at the time.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-is-a-space-to-think" }, { "date": "2026-01-23", "subject": "Perplexity", "event": "Terms of Service updated; Section 10 governs in-chat purchases, with the merchant as seller and Perplexity 'not a party'.", "qualifier": "Section 10 is still worded as 'Shopping with Perplexity Pro'.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/legal/terms-of-service" }, { "date": "2026-01-16", "subject": "ChatGPT", "event": "OpenAI advertising principles: plan to test ads for logged-in US adults on Free and Go; 'Ads do not influence the answers'.", "qualifier": "", "basis": "official", "source": "https://openai.com/index/our-approach-to-advertising-and-expanding-access/" }, { "date": "2026-01-12", "subject": "Siri", "event": "Google-Apple joint statement: next-generation Apple Foundation Models based on Gemini, still running on device and in Private Cloud Compute.", "qualifier": "Covers models only; no Shopping Graph or Merchant Center data path.", "basis": "partner", "source": "https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/company-announcements/joint-statement-google-apple/" }, { "date": "2026-01-11", "subject": "Gemini and AI Mode", "event": "Universal Commerce Protocol launched at NRF; checkout in AI Mode and Gemini announced for eligible US retailers; Business Agent live Jan 12; Direct Offers pilot.", "qualifier": "Checkout was announced as coming soon; the consumer rollout began February 11. PayPal listed as coming soon.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/agentic-commerce-ai-tools-protocol-retailers-platforms/" }, { "date": "2026-01-11", "subject": "Sparky, Gemini", "event": "Walmart and Sam's Club experience 'built by Walmart' announced for Gemini via UCP, launching first in the US.", "qualifier": "Announced in future tense; not confirmed live as of October 8, 2026.", "basis": "partner", "source": "https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2026/01/11/walmart-and-google-turn-ai-discovery-into-effortless-shopping-experiences" }, { "date": "2026-01-11", "subject": "Copilot, Gemini", "event": "Shopify announces UCP co-development and Agentic Storefronts integrations (Copilot embedded checkout).", "qualifier": "Perplexity and Claude are not named.", "basis": "partner", "source": "https://www.shopify.com/news/ai-commerce-at-scale" }, { "date": "2026-01-08", "subject": "Copilot", "event": "Copilot Checkout begins rolling out in the US on Copilot.com with PayPal, Shopify and Stripe; Brand Agents for Shopify merchants.", "qualifier": "Shopify merchants auto-enrolled after an opt-out window. This post said Merchant Center was not required; Microsoft's current onboarding page says it is, and Microsoft has not said which governs.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://about.ads.microsoft.com/en/blog/post/january-2026/conversations-that-convert-copilot-checkout-and-brand-agents" }, { "date": "2026-01-06", "subject": "Alexa for Shopping", "event": "Modern Retail reports brands enrolled in Shop Direct and Buy for Me without their knowledge; Amazon says businesses can opt out by email.", "qualifier": "Amazon gave branddirect@amazon.com then; the live FAQ now says shopdirect@amazon.com.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://www.modernretail.co/technology/brands-are-upset-that-buy-for-me-is-featuring-their-products-on-amazon-without-permission/" }, { "date": "2026-01-06", "subject": "Sparky", "event": "Walmart Connect: first Sparky ad formats tested in fall 2025 and continuing in 2026.", "qualifier": "General availability and pricing unpublished.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://www.walmartconnect.com/resources/articles/2025/the-next-generation-of-ai-powered-retail-media" }, { "date": "2025-12-11", "subject": "Stripe", "event": "Stripe announces the Agentic Commerce Suite: hosted ACP endpoint, catalog syndication, per-agent selection in the Dashboard.", "qualifier": "Names no AI agent. Seller countries: US, CA and select European countries.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://stripe.com/blog/agentic-commerce-suite" }, { "date": "2025-12-10", "subject": "Gemini and AI Mode", "event": "Google product structured data guidance updated; Google says no special schema.org is needed for AI Overviews or AI Mode.", "qualifier": "Date is the last-updated stamp on Google's product structured data and AI features pages. The AI features page says there is 'no special schema.org structured data that you need to add' for AI Overviews or AI Mode.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features" }, { "date": "2025-12-08", "subject": "ChatGPT", "event": "Instacart app in ChatGPT launches with in-ChatGPT checkout (ACP and Stripe).", "qualifier": "Announced in an Instacart release.", "basis": "partner", "source": "https://www.barchart.com/story/news/36507554/instacart-app-launches-in-openai-chatgpt-first-company-to-offer-new-instant-checkout-app-experience" }, { "date": "2025-11-25", "subject": "Perplexity", "event": "'Shopping That Puts You First' relaunch, free to all US users, plus PayPal Instant Buy with Abercrombie & Fitch, Ashley, Fabletics, Adorama and Newegg.", "qualifier": "Instant Buy limited to compatible merchants and categories; Enterprise excluded; Perplexity's own post said iOS and Android would follow 'in the coming weeks'.", "basis": "partner", "source": "https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2025-11-PayPal-and-Perplexity-Launch-Instant-Buy" }, { "date": "2025-11-24", "subject": "ChatGPT", "event": "Shopping research launched; reads public retail product pages; results organic.", "qualifier": "Logged-in Free, Go, Plus and Pro users. The promised Instant Checkout purchasing from shopping research never shipped.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://openai.com/index/chatgpt-shopping-research/" }, { "date": "2025-11-21", "subject": "ChatGPT, Amazon", "event": "Amazon adds ChatGPT-User and OAI-SearchBot disallows to robots.txt; GPTBot was already blocked.", "qualifier": "Reported on this date; still in force on October 8, 2026.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://www.modernretail.co/technology/amazon-quietly-blocks-more-of-openais-chatgpt-web-crawlers-from-accessing-its-site/" }, { "date": "2025-11-20", "subject": "ChatGPT", "event": "Instant Checkout rolls out to Shopify merchants (Spanx, Skims, Glossier).", "qualifier": "Small scale; logged-in US Free, Plus and Pro users; deprioritized Mar 2026.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6825453-chatgpt-release-notes" }, { "date": "2025-11-19", "subject": "ChatGPT", "event": "Target app in ChatGPT announced: multi-item baskets, fresh food, Drive Up, Order Pickup, checkout through the Target account.", "qualifier": "Beta 'next week'.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://openai.com/index/target-partnership/" }, { "date": "2025-11-19", "subject": "Perplexity", "event": "Perplexity announces free agentic shopping for US users with PayPal checkout.", "qualifier": "PayPal counted 'hundreds' of Instant Buy merchants at launch.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2025/11/19/perplexity-agentic-commerce-experience-to-expand-to-free-users/" }, { "date": "2025-11-18", "subject": "Alexa for Shopping", "event": "Rufus gains account memory, price history and Auto Buy at a target price.", "qualifier": "The '50+ upgrades' count is cumulative since launch. Auto Buy was for Prime members.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://ppc.land/amazons-rufus-ai-assistant-gains-memory-price-tracking-and-auto-buying/" }, { "date": "2025-11-13", "subject": "Gemini and AI Mode", "event": "Agentic checkout starts rolling out in Search, including AI Mode, for eligible US merchants (Wayfair, Chewy, Quince, select Shopify merchants); Gemini app shopping opens to all US Gemini users.", "qualifier": "Agentic checkout buys on the merchant's own site with Google Pay after a price-tracking trigger.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://blog.google/products/shopping/agentic-checkout-holiday-ai-shopping/" }, { "date": "2025-11-04", "subject": "Perplexity, Amazon", "event": "Amazon sues Perplexity in N.D. Cal. over Comet shopping on Amazon; Perplexity responds with 'Bullying is Not Innovation'.", "qualifier": "Press describes the claims generally as 'computer fraud and abuse statutes'.", "basis": "other", "source": "https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/bullying-is-not-innovation" }, { "date": "2025-10-30", "subject": "Pinterest Assistant", "event": "Pinterest Assistant (visual-first, voice or text) gives shoppable recommendations.", "qualifier": "US beta for users 18 and older.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://newsroom.pinterest.com/news/pinterest-assistant-revolutionizing-the-way-you-shop-online/" }, { "date": "2025-10-28", "subject": "Perplexity, PayPal", "event": "PayPal Agentic Commerce Services: Store Sync names Perplexity as the first channel ('before the end of the year'); Agent Ready payments due early 2026.", "qualifier": "Enrollment was 'available soon' at the time.", "basis": "partner", "source": "https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2025-10-28-PayPal-Launches-Agentic-Commerce-Services-to-Power-AI-Driven-Shopping" }, { "date": "2025-10-14", "subject": "Sparky, ChatGPT", "event": "Walmart and OpenAI announce shopping inside ChatGPT via Instant Checkout.", "qualifier": "'Soon'; superseded in March 2026 by the Sparky-powered Walmart app.", "basis": "partner", "source": "https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2025/10/14/walmart-partners-with-openai-to-create-ai-first-shopping-experiences" }, { "date": "2025-10-02", "subject": "Perplexity", "event": "Comet browser made free for everyone (desktop); limited release had begun July 9.", "qualifier": "Desktop only at that time.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://www.pymnts.com/news/artificial-intelligence/2025/perplexity-makes-ai-powered-browser-available-all-no-cost" }, { "date": "2025-09-29", "subject": "ChatGPT, ACP", "event": "Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol (with Stripe) launched; US users could buy from US Etsy sellers; merchants paid a small fee.", "qualifier": "Single item only; deprioritized Mar 24, 2026. The 'over a million Shopify merchants' plan shipped only at small scale.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://openai.com/index/buy-it-in-chatgpt/" }, { "date": "2025-09", "subject": "Sparky", "event": "Walmart Connect tests a 'Sponsored Prompt' format in Sparky with select advertisers (September to early November).", "qualifier": "Low engagement reported by WSJ.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://www.shopifreaks.com/walmart-is-testing-sponsored-prompt-ads-in-its-ai-assistant-sparky/" }, { "date": "2025-08-25", "subject": "Claude", "event": "Claude for Chrome research preview for 1,000 Max users.", "qualifier": "Launched with approval before purchasing; purchases are now prohibited.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://claude.com/blog/claude-for-chrome" }, { "date": "2025-08-21", "subject": "Amazon", "event": "Amazon adds six more AI crawlers (Meta, Google, Huawei, Mistral and others) to robots.txt disallows.", "qualifier": "Reported on this date.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://www.modernretail.co/technology/amazon-expands-its-fight-to-keep-ai-bots-off-its-e-commerce-site/" }, { "date": "2025-06-09", "subject": "Siri", "event": "WWDC25: Visual Intelligence on screenshots searches Google, Etsy and supported apps for products; Wallet summarizes order tracking from emails.", "qualifier": "", "basis": "official", "source": "https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/06/apple-intelligence-gets-even-more-powerful-with-new-capabilities-across-apple-devices/" }, { "date": "2025-06-06", "subject": "Sparky", "event": "Sparky launches in the Walmart app across all categories.", "qualifier": "US app, signed-in customers.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2025/06/06/walmart-the-future-of-shopping-is-agentic-meet-sparky" }, { "date": "2025-05-27", "subject": "Claude", "event": "Web search available globally on all Claude plans.", "qualifier": "Team and Enterprise need owner enablement; image results have no documented launch date.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://claude.com/blog/web-search" }, { "date": "2025-05-20", "subject": "Gemini and AI Mode", "event": "I/O 2025: AI Mode shopping announced for the US 'in the coming months'; virtual try-on in Labs; agentic 'buy for me' previewed.", "qualifier": "Google later reported the Shopping Graph at more than 60 billion listings (May 2026).", "basis": "official", "source": "https://blog.google/products/shopping/google-shopping-ai-mode-virtual-try-on-update/" }, { "date": "2025-05-14", "subject": "Perplexity", "event": "Perplexity selects PayPal to power agentic commerce on Pro.", "qualifier": "Planned US launch 'this summer' at the time.", "basis": "partner", "source": "https://about.pypl.com/news-details/2025/Perplexity-Selects-PayPal-to-Power-Agentic-Commerce/default.aspx" }, { "date": "2025-04-28", "subject": "ChatGPT", "event": "Shopping added to ChatGPT search: product results from third-party structured metadata, not ads.", "qualifier": "Launched globally including logged-out users. The merchants page now says shopping is live in the US.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/28/openai-upgrades-chatgpt-search-with-shopping-features/" }, { "date": "2025-04-18", "subject": "Copilot", "event": "Copilot Merchant Program introduced (merchants share product specs).", "qualifier": "Post modified 2026-07-07; now routes merchants to the Agentic Commerce onboarding site.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot/blog/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/4530" }, { "date": "2025-04-08", "subject": "Alexa for Shopping", "event": "Buy for Me announced as a beta for a subset of US customers on iOS and Android.", "qualifier": "Current Amazon pages say only 'eligible products'.", "basis": "press", "source": "http://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2025/04/08/amazon-buy-for-me-agentic-ai-shopping-tool/" }, { "date": "2025-03-27", "subject": "Perplexity", "event": "Firmly.ai integration; merchants remain merchant of record.", "qualifier": "Current status unconfirmed.", "basis": "partner", "source": "https://www.streetinsider.com/Press+Releases/Perplexity+Integrates+firmly.ai+Commerce+Tech+to+Scale+Seamless+Ecommerce+Experience/24557284.html" }, { "date": "2025-03-19", "subject": "Claude", "event": "Brave Search added to Anthropic's subprocessor list under web search.", "qualifier": "Reported by press; Anthropic's product pages do not name the provider.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/21/anthropic-appears-to-be-using-brave-to-power-web-searches-for-its-claude-chatbot/" }, { "date": "2025-02", "subject": "Alexa for Shopping", "event": "Amazon introduces the Shop Direct program.", "qualifier": "Month-level date, as reported.", "basis": "press", "source": "https://www.modernretail.co/technology/marketplace-briefing-amazon-expands-ai-powered-shop-direct-program-that-lists-customers-buy-from-other-retailers-sites/" }, { "date": "2025-02", "subject": "TikTok", "event": "TikTok help article documents the 'Shopify In-App Checkout' beta: transaction on the merchant domain, no added fees.", "qualifier": "Predecessor to Buy Direct; 'not available to all advertisers'. The month is the article's last-updated date.", "basis": "official", "source": "https://ads.tiktok.com/help/article/about-in-app-shopify-checkout-experience-tiktok" } ], "claimsNoLongerAccurate": [ { "claim": "You can buy directly in ChatGPT with Instant Checkout.", "currentFact": "Instant Checkout was deprioritized on March 24, 2026 and is in beta only for select marketplace partners; purchases complete on the merchant's own site or app.", "source": "https://developers.openai.com/plugins/plugin-guidelines.md" }, { "claim": "Instant Checkout was shut down on March 4 or 5, 2026.", "currentFact": "It was not shut down. An OpenAI spokesperson said on March 6, 2026 that it was moving to Apps, OpenAI's own post is dated March 24, 2026, and its help center still mentions Instant Checkout for some eligible products.", "source": "https://openai.com/index/powering-product-discovery-in-chatgpt/" }, { "claim": "Over a million Shopify merchants are coming to ChatGPT Instant Checkout.", "currentFact": "OpenAI began rolling out Instant Checkout to Shopify merchants on November 20, 2025, naming Spanx, Skims and Glossier. Shopify merchants now reach ChatGPT through Shopify Catalog, with checkout on the merchant's store.", "source": "https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6825453-chatgpt-release-notes" }, { "claim": "Merchants pay OpenAI a fee on ChatGPT sales.", "currentFact": "OpenAI states there are no fees on purchases that start in ChatGPT; the fee applied only to the now-limited Instant Checkout.", "source": "https://chatgpt.com/merchants" }, { "claim": "ChatGPT shopping results require a product feed.", "currentFact": "OpenAI's merchant FAQ says a feed is not needed if ChatGPT already crawls the site.", "source": "https://chatgpt.com/merchants" }, { "claim": "Etsy and Walmart sell through ChatGPT Instant Checkout.", "currentFact": "Press reports say Etsy's Instant Checkout integration ended in March 2026, and Etsy's beta app in ChatGPT (May 2026) sends shoppers to Etsy to buy; Walmart moved to a Sparky-powered app in ChatGPT around March 24, 2026.", "source": [ "https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/05/etsy-launches-its-app-within-chatgpt-as-it-continues-its-ai-push/", "https://www.retaildive.com/news/walmart-sparky-chatgpt-instant-checkout/815647/" ] }, { "claim": "OpenAI's feed specification requires inventory quantity.", "currentFact": "The current specification has no inventory-quantity field; search and checkout eligibility are set with is_eligible_search and is_eligible_checkout.", "source": "https://developers.openai.com/commerce/specs/feed" }, { "claim": "Amazon products are now in ChatGPT.", "currentFact": "The September 2026 Amazon DSP pilot lets select US advertisers buy ChatGPT ads, which press reports say can include catalog-driven product ads, so Amazon-sold items may appear as paid placements. It does not put Amazon's catalog into organic results, and Amazon's robots.txt still disallows GPTBot, ChatGPT-User and OAI-SearchBot.", "source": "https://www.amazon.com/robots.txt" }, { "claim": "The Shopping Graph has 50 billion listings.", "currentFact": "Google reported more than 60 billion product listings on May 19, 2026.", "source": "https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/shopping/google-shopping-cart/" }, { "claim": "UCP checkout launched for US shoppers on January 11, 2026.", "currentFact": "It was announced as coming soon on January 11; the consumer rollout began February 11, 2026 with Etsy and Wayfair.", "source": "https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/digital-advertising-commerce-2026/" }, { "claim": "Shoppers can pay with PayPal in AI Mode and Gemini.", "currentFact": "Google's checkout documentation names only Google Pay. Google announced PayPal as coming soon on January 11, 2026, and no launch has been confirmed.", "source": "https://developers.google.com/merchant/ucp/faq" }, { "claim": "Blocking Google-Extended removes products from AI Mode and AI Overviews.", "currentFact": "Google-Extended does not affect inclusion in Google Search; AI features are controlled through Googlebot and snippet directives.", "source": [ "https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/google-common-crawlers", "https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features" ] }, { "claim": "Conversational attributes boost ranking in AI Mode.", "currentFact": "Google documents no ranking benefit.", "source": "https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/shopping/google-shopping-updates-holiday-shopping/" }, { "claim": "Universal Cart is live in Canada and Australia.", "currentFact": "Google Wallet help says Universal Cart is available only in the United States.", "source": "https://support.google.com/wallet/answer/17085590" }, { "claim": "Google's AI performance insights is a pilot that began in July 2026.", "currentFact": "Google made it generally available in the US and four other countries on September 16, 2026, after announcing it on May 20.", "source": "https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/shopping/google-shopping-updates-holiday-shopping/" }, { "claim": "The Copilot Merchant Program form is how merchants get listed in Copilot.", "currentFact": "Microsoft now onboards Copilot Checkout merchants through its agentic commerce page, and the April 2025 Copilot Merchant Program post now redirects to the Copilot blog index.", "source": "https://about.ads.microsoft.com/en/solutions/technology/agentic-commerce" }, { "claim": "Microsoft dropped ACP for UCP.", "currentFact": "The author retracted the claim in July 2026; Microsoft added UCP alongside its ACP-side integrations.", "source": "https://dev.to/ucptools/microsoft-dropped-acp-for-ucp-in-104-days-identity-linking-is-why-2ce9" }, { "claim": "Rufus is Amazon's current shopping assistant in the US.", "currentFact": "Rufus was renamed Alexa for Shopping in the US on May 13, 2026.", "source": "https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-rufus" }, { "claim": "Amazon has published no terms for sponsored prompts.", "currentFact": "An Amazon Ads note dated March 10, 2026 covers US general availability on March 25, cost-per-click billing, automatic enrollment and pausing by prompt.", "source": "https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/unboxed-2025-sponsored-products-and-sponsored-brands-prompts" }, { "claim": "Buy for Me is opt-in for brands.", "currentFact": "Amazon sources Buy for Me data from public merchant websites by default; brands opt out by email, and feeds are opt-in.", "source": "https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=204815362011" }, { "claim": "A court order bans Perplexity's Comet from Amazon.", "currentFact": "The injunction issued March 9, 2026 was vacated by the Ninth Circuit on August 4, 2026, and rehearing was denied on September 10.", "source": "https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/417793/appeals-court-again-rejects-amazon-bid-to-block-pe.html" }, { "claim": "Perplexity checkout requires a Pro subscription.", "currentFact": "Shopping and Instant Buy have been free for all US users since November 25, 2025, except on Enterprise Pro and Enterprise Max plans, per Perplexity's Help Center, though its terms of service still describe purchases as a Perplexity Pro feature.", "source": "https://www.perplexity.ai/help-center/en/articles/10352906-what-is-instant-buy" }, { "claim": "Perplexity sells sponsored product placements.", "currentFact": "Perplexity's Help Center says product listings are not sponsored, and the Financial Times reported in February 2026 that Perplexity had wound down its separate sponsored-question ad program.", "source": "https://the-decoder.com/perplexity-pulls-advertising-from-its-search-engine-calling-itself-an-accuracy-business/" }, { "claim": "Claude web search is US-only and paid-only.", "currentFact": "It has been available on all plans globally since May 27, 2025.", "source": "https://claude.com/blog/web-search" }, { "claim": "Claude in Chrome can buy things once you approve.", "currentFact": "Making purchases or financial transactions is prohibited in Claude in Chrome regardless of permission mode.", "source": "https://support.claude.com/en/articles/12902446" }, { "claim": "Shopify merchants are sold in Claude automatically.", "currentFact": "Shopify's Agentic Storefronts channel list does not include Claude.", "source": "https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/online-sales-channels/agentic-storefronts" }, { "claim": "Siri AI shopping answers come from Google's Shopping Graph.", "currentFact": "The Google and Apple joint statement covers Gemini models and cloud technology for Apple's foundation models, not product data; Apple documents Applebot-crawled data as context for Siri's answers.", "source": "https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/company-announcements/joint-statement-google-apple/" }, { "claim": "Blocking meta-externalagent keeps Muse off a site.", "currentFact": "Muse is not one of Meta's documented crawlers; its browser activity appears as the user's, so robots.txt cannot target it.", "source": "https://research.meta.ai/blog/security-and-safety-for-ai-agents-our-approach-with-muse" }, { "claim": "PayPal checkout is live in Muse.", "currentFact": "PayPal's September 22 announcement was forward-looking, and CNBC reported on October 3 that it was not yet available.", "source": "https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/03/meta-muse-shopping-ai-agent.html" } ] }