Hey👋,
I'm Giacomo

I bought my girlfriend’s Christmas presents on ChatGPT.

Turns out, I wasn’t alone 😅.

Because shopping is now the second most common AI use case.

Which means people are discovering and purchasing products inside AI tools, instead of traditional channels like organic search or social media.

This scares the hell out of retailers!
So here's how they're reacting:

1️⃣ Block AI tools.
Amazon blocked OpenAI crawlers and sued Perplexity.
Fair enough. When you’re the default destination already, you don’t need intermediaries.

2️⃣ Collaborate.
Walmart is bringing its products to ChatGPT checkout.
Instacart already launched a GPT shopping app.
They’re treating AI like what it actually is: a new distribution channel.

3️⃣ Build your own chatbot.
Amazon launched Rufus.
Zalando launched Zalando Assistant.
“If users want a chat interface, we’ll build it ourselves.”

It’ll be fascinating to see which strategy wins in 2026.

But I have an idea already.
For everyone who isn’t Amazon, option two is the winner.

We’ve already seen this with Google Shopping.
What initially looked like a tax for visibility is now the largest retail acquisition channel.

Today, not being on Google Shopping is unthinkable.
Next year, not being purchasable via AI will be the same.

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🔔 Everyday I try to make sense of the AI Marketing revolution with posts just like this. If you liked it, consider following me for more!