AI Companies Flock to Chat Apps for All-in-One Shopping Experience

AI companies in the US and China are integrating shopping tools into consumer apps, aiming to create all-purpose services for search, chat, buying, and daily tasks. OpenAI's ChatGPT now has a "shopping research" feature and "instant checkout" option, while Alibaba's Qwen app has been downloaded over 10 million times since its launch. China's internet firms, such as ByteDance, are also adding instant shopping features to their AI chat apps to keep users within their platforms.