A PYMNTS Intelligence survey of 2,191 U.S. consumers conducted in August 2026 found that while 23% of shoppers now begin retail research with an AI assistant – roughly 61 million people – six‑in‑ten of the resulting AI‑assisted purchases are completed on Amazon, with big‑box retailers accounting for another 20% and brand sites only 6%.
OpenAI’s Instant Checkout was marketed as a new habit loop: cue (“I want to buy something”), routine (ask the AI and buy in‑chat), and reward (the best offer delivered to the door). The cue and half of the routine materialised, but the promised reward – a frictionless checkout that could compete with Amazon’s free‑shipping, fast‑delivery and easy‑return experience – never did.
According to the same study, average spend on AI‑assisted orders rose from $889 in June to $1,039 in August, a 17% increase, yet 60% of that spend still landed on Amazon. Walmart reported that purchases routed through ChatGPT converted at only one‑third the rate of those sent to its own site, and OpenAI disclosed that only about 30 Shopify merchants ever went live with Instant Checkout, despite an initial promise of support for more than a million merchants.
The failure mirrors a 1990s lesson from Procter & Gamble’s Febrze launch. Initially marketed as a scent‑neutralising technology, Febrze struggled because consumers could not detect the problem it solved. After P&G shifted the cue to the end of a cleaning routine and added a pleasant fragrance as the reward, sales surged to $230 million in the first year and a billion‑dollar revenue by 2011. Analysts in the PYMNTS piece argue that AI commerce has yet to find a comparable reward to replace Amazon’s trusted checkout experience.
OpenAI’s Instant Checkout was officially removed from the market by March 2026 after internal sources told reporters the feature “did not drive sales.” The shutdown follows a pattern where new intermediaries – from Google’s short‑lived Buy button to Jet.com’s failed pricing engine – moved discovery but never captured the final purchase, leaving the “reward” squarely with established marketplaces.
Industry observers say the next hurdle for AI‑driven commerce is to match Amazon’s “bad‑day” safety net: low‑cost shipping, reliable delivery, and hassle‑free returns. Without that, consumers are likely to continue using AI for product discovery while completing the transaction on the platform they trust most.