Letting an AI agent do your shopping is, for better or worse, one of the hottest AI trends. And now it’s looking like ChatGPT will soon be joining the agentic shopping spree.
Tapping the Customize button on the ChatGPT mobile app reveals (among other options) a new Wallet option, labeled as “Coming soon.”
“A little wallet. A world of possibilities. Your Wallet is on its way,” the copy reads after tapping the “coming soon” link. The ChatGPT wallet teaser first started attracting notice last week.
ChatGPT parent OpenAI hasn’t made much of the new wallet, and there wasn’t any mention of shopping abilities for Dots, ChatGPT’s new personal agents, during the company’s annual developer conference last week. I’ve reached out to OpenAI for comment.
But giving agents access to digital wallets has become a hot new AI trend, allowing users to send their AI assistants off to shop on their behalf for anything from groceries to theater tickets.
Meta’s Muse agent already has access to a digital wallet powered by Link by Stripe. Aside from facilitating purchases with merchants who take Stripe payments, Link by Stripe can also create a one-time virtual credit card that’s “scoped” for an individual purchase, meaning the agent can shop pretty much anywhere there’s an online credit card form.
Muse is programmed not to make purchases without asking for permission first, and Link by Stripe is designed so the agent can’t see the details of the payment methods you’ve added to your Stripe account.
Now, it’s not clear whether ChatGPT’s wallet will work the same way as Meta Muse’s, or what will power it.
It’s worth noting that OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman is also a co-founder of World Money, a financial “super app” that can hold US dollar and local-currency stablecoin balances that allow for easy cross-border money exchanges. That said, it’s not clear whether World Money and ChatGPT’s forthcoming wallet are connected.
Of course, the big question about digital wallets for agents like Meta Muse and ChatGPT’s Dots is whether you trust those agents with your credit cards.
We’ve already seen cases where Muse took actions that caught its users by surprise, such as sending the home address of a user to a complete stranger. (That user had asked Muse to take charge of their Facebook Marketplace account.)
And while Muse is supposed to never complete a purchase without a user’s explicit A-OK, there’s always room for interpretation about what counts as permission.
That said, I’ve no doubt that agentic AI shopping is going to be a thing, and ChatGPT’s introduction of its own digital wallet will only make the trend more mainstream.
