AI shopping is getting more complicated in a way that looks neat in demos and messy in operations.

This episode follows EP014 and asks the tighter version of the same question: once discovery starts in ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, or another AI shopping surface, who actually owns the sale, the attribution, the checkout path, and the support policy that comes after it?

• Why OpenAI’s shift toward product discovery and merchant-controlled checkout matters
• Why Shopify’s agentic storefront tools make AI shopping feel more like channel ops than hype
• Why Google’s personalization and protocol work make QA and merchandising harder to reproduce
• Why “we showed up in the answer” is still not a sufficient success metric

• OpenAI: https://openai.com/index/powering-product-discovery-in-chatgpt/
• OpenAI Help: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/11128490-shopping-with-chatgpt-search
• Shopify: https://www.shopify.com/news/agentic-commerce-momentum
• Shopify Help: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/online-sales-channels/agentic-storefronts/chatgpt
• Google: https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/personal-intelligence-expansion/
• Google India: https://blog.google/intl/en-in/products/explore-communicate/new-ways-google-is-using-ai-to-make-shopping-easier/
• Google UCP updates: https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/shopping/ucp-updates/
• Search Engine Land: https://searchengineland.com/google-updates-universal-commerce-protocol-to-help-retailers-sell-on-the-open-agentic-web-456891

• EP017 Practitioner Worksheet — AI Commerce Control Check

• EP014: Commerce Surface Check
• EP015: Retained Artifact Check
• EP016: National Capacity Check