We’re living through a shift that’s bigger than “AI in marketing” or “AI in business.”
We’re witnessing the rise of agentic commerce—a world where AI agents themselves become the new channel for product discovery, recommendation, and purchase.
The way people buy things online is changing right now, in real time.
The question for every brand, retailer, and creator is simple:
Will your products be discoverable in this new world—or invisible to it?
Understanding Agentic Commerce
What Is Agentic Commerce?
Agentic commerce is the natural evolution of e-commerce, where AI agents act on behalf of users to find, recommend, and purchase products through natural conversation.
Instead of opening a browser and typing “best running shoes,” a customer can now ask an AI agent like ChatGPT:
“Find me running shoes similar to the ones I bought last year—something light but good for flat feet.”
The AI understands context, remembers preferences, and then facilitates the entire transaction—from search to checkout—without ever opening a web page.
That end-to-end flow, where discovery and purchase happen inside the same AI conversation, is what defines agentic commerce.
Why It Matters Right Now
OpenAI’s Instant Checkout integration—built on the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) and launched with partners like Shopify, Stripe, and Etsy—has turned ChatGPT from a conversational assistant into a full-blown commerce channel.
This means ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other large-scale AI systems are no longer just answering questions; they’re making purchase decisions.
And that’s the key:
The same algorithms that once decided what content people saw are now deciding what products they buy.
The Core Shift
Traditional e-commerce depends on human search.
Agentic commerce depends on AI reasoning.
| Traditional E-Commerce | Agentic Commerce |
|---|---|
| User searches and clicks | AI agent asks, filters, and transacts |
| SEO and ads drive visibility | Product feed quality drives visibility |
| Discovery through search results | Discovery through conversation context |
| Buyer compares options manually | AI evaluates and recommends automatically |
| Conversion depends on UX | Conversion depends on data and trust |
That single difference—who does the searching—changes everything.
How Agentic Commerce Works
The Role of the Agent
AI agents are not just interfaces; they’re autonomous participants in the shopping journey.
Each agent interprets a user’s intent, cross-references multiple data sources, and then recommends products from ACP-compliant feeds provided by platforms like GXO.dev.
The moment your store integrates through GXO.dev, your product catalog becomes readable, understandable, and usable by AI agents across platforms.
This is how your brand enters the new layer of digital visibility—what we call AI discoverability.
The Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)
Think of ACP as the “HTML” of the agentic economy—a structured way for AI systems to understand product data, prices, availability, and transaction logic.
An ACP feed tells an AI:
- What your product is
- Why it’s relevant
- How to buy it securely
- When it’s available
- How to describe it naturally in conversation
By adopting ACP, your products become part of a universal, machine-understandable marketplace.
The Engine Behind It: GXO.dev
At GXO.dev, we built the first full-stack Agentic Commerce Platform to make this shift seamless for brands.
Instead of juggling complex APIs, merchant integrations, and compliance logic, GXO.dev handles:
- Feed generation in ACP format
- Multi-platform sync (Shopify, Etsy, BigCommerce, Stripe)
- Product optimization for AI readability
- Analytics for AI agent interactions and conversions
Essentially, we translate your existing commerce setup into the language AI agents speak.
Why Agentic Commerce Changes Everything
1. Discovery Becomes Democratic Again
Right now, 80% of online visibility goes to the top 20% of brands—the ones who can afford massive ad spend.
Agentic commerce changes that.
AI agents don’t care who spends the most on ads.
They care which products best match the user’s request, based on data quality, clarity, and relevance.
If your feed is well-structured, optimized, and ACP-compliant, your products can compete on equal footing with the biggest names in the industry.
That’s an entirely new playing field.
2. The End of the Attention War
Traditional e-commerce is built on fighting for human attention—banners, popups, retargeting, endless scroll.
Agentic commerce ends that arms race.
When a user delegates discovery to an AI agent, attention becomes permissioned.
Your product appears only if it’s genuinely relevant to the query or intent.
That forces brands to refocus on substance over noise—real value, clear descriptions, authentic quality.
And it rewards the brands that have always deserved to win but couldn’t outspend competitors.
3. The Return of Trust
For years, customers have grown skeptical of digital marketing.
They’ve been promised “personalization” but delivered spam.
Agentic commerce flips that script.
When a trusted AI agent recommends your product, that recommendation feels like a referral, not an ad.
This is where subtle persuasion meets data integrity:
- The customer feels understood (“it gets what I need”)
- Their fears are eased (“I’m not being sold to”)
- Their suspicions are confirmed (“finally, something that makes sense”)
That emotional dynamic is straight out of Blair Warren’s persuasion framework—trust built through alignment, not pressure.
How Brands Can Prepare
Step 1: Audit Your Product Data
Before anything else, make sure your data is clean, consistent, and complete.
AI agents rely entirely on structured information—if your descriptions are vague, categories mismatched, or images missing metadata, you’ll be filtered out before you even appear.
Checklist:
- Product titles are clear, not keyword-stuffed
- Descriptions read naturally in plain language
- Attributes (size, material, color, etc.) are filled out
- High-resolution images include alt text and context
- Pricing and availability are accurate and live
This is what we call AI-ready commerce data.
Step 2: Generate an ACP-Compliant Feed
Through GXO.dev, you can automatically generate your ACP feed—essentially your product’s “passport” into the agentic ecosystem.
An ACP feed allows ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and others to:
- Parse your products correctly
- Display them conversationally
- Validate their availability and pricing
- Facilitate checkout natively
That’s what makes your store discoverable in the new AI-driven economy.
Step 3: Connect and Test Across Platforms
Integrate with your preferred platforms—Shopify, Etsy, BigCommerce, Stripe—and test how your products appear in AI previews.
You can do this directly inside GXO.dev’s dashboard using AI Previews, which simulate how agents discover and recommend your items in conversation.
Then, track your metrics in the Feed Analytics panel:
- Discovery rate
- Conversion from agent recommendations
- Conversation completion rate
- AI agent engagement over time
Step 4: Optimize and Iterate
Agentic commerce isn’t “set it and forget it.”
The same way we once optimized SEO for Google, we now optimize agentic SEO for AI systems.
Your feed becomes the new content layer—titles, descriptions, and metadata are your ranking factors.
The difference is that, this time, you’re not optimizing for algorithms—you’re optimizing for understanding.
When your data reads naturally and clearly, AI agents reward you with better placement in conversational results.
The Early Results Are Already Clear
Etsy has already confirmed early merchant wins through ChatGPT’s Instant Checkout integration:
- Higher average order value per AI-discovered session
- Faster time-to-purchase (no bounce steps)
- Improved discovery for niche products that rarely surface in search
Similarly, Walmart’s early move into agentic retail—allowing customers to shop Sam’s Club products directly in ChatGPT—shows just how quickly this new paradigm is becoming mainstream.
When you see both independent Etsy sellers and enterprise retailers like Walmart adopting the same protocol, you know this isn’t a trend.
It’s infrastructure.
The Broader Implications
A New Type of Customer Journey
The “funnel” is gone.
In agentic commerce, the journey looks more like:
Intent → Conversation → Discovery → Recommendation → Checkout → Fulfillment
And it all happens within the same environment.
This compressed journey means:
- Less friction
- Faster decisions
- Fewer drop-offs
- More measurable attribution
For brands, that means you’re not just selling faster—you’re building relationships through trust and context.
The End of the Ad-Driven Era
In a few years, we may look back on PPC ads, email blasts, and endless retargeting as relics of a noisy, inefficient era.
When AI agents filter the world on behalf of the customer, authenticity, clarity, and trustworthiness become the only currencies that matter.
Your brand voice, your product data, and your consistency will define your visibility—not your budget.
That’s good news for businesses building genuine value.
