Hey there, it’s been a minute. I got in a nice posting rhythm earlier in the year, but preparations for DOC (which was amazing, but exhausting) and life in general got in the way for most of the late Summer / early Fall. That’s starting to change, thank goodness.
If you’re a regular reader you know I’ve been somewhat obsessed with how AI will impact society and business – kind of like I was obsessed with how Search would impact society and business over the past two decades. An item about Target and OpenAI caught my attention this morning, news that, in more normal times, I’d have already written about in detail. Here’s the TLDR:
Following in Walmart’s footsteps, Target is standing up a retail store application inside OpenAI’s ChatGPT. From OpenAI’s press release:
…the new Target app in ChatGPT will bring a curated, conversational shopping experience. Launching next week in beta, it will let shoppers ask for ideas, browse and build multi-item baskets, shop for fresh food, and check out using their choice fulfillment options.
Sounds pretty straightforward, and in most ways, it is*. But while they sound innocuous, these kinds of deals are building, brick by brick, an economic system for AI that, for consumers, will work exactly the same as today’s commercial Internet: A place that is, for the most part, misaligned with their interests and values.
I’m not picking on Target here, at least, not directly. Like every retailer on the planet, Target doesn’t want to miss out on the next Big Tech disruption. Many were slow to adapt to search, and plodding in their adoption of social and mobile. Clearly AI is here to stay, and with 800 million consumers on ChatGPT and 650 million on Google’s Gemini, companies like Target have to start showing up in more integrated ways across “AI surfaces.”
But I don’t trust any AI shopping agent who works for the folks I’m buying from. Ask yourself this: Do you trust the recommendations coming from Expedia? How about your health insurer? Do you trust the paid links on Amazon? I didn’t think so. You know these services are informed mainly by someone else’s profit. They might be useful, but their motives are suspect.
I raised this question two and a half years ago (!) in this post:
Here’s the crux of it:
Imagine a GPT chatbot that you own, trust, and control. Let’s call it a genie, because honestly, that’s the most appropriate word for this new entity. This genie has access to everything you do on your phone, your computer, and sure, why not – your Alexa, your car, basically every digital surface with which you interact. Imagine it’s bounded by immutable rules that state you and you alone can tell it what to do, what information to share, what services to connect to, on what terms, and so on. Now imagine you can ask that genie to perform all manner of magic on your behalf – pretty much any question you can think of, it will figure out an answer… How about negotiating a way better deal with your healthcare provider by threatening to move to competitors? Done! Once you’re happy with that healthcare provider, can you ask your genie to file all your claims and make sure you get reimbursed by checking your bank statements? Why yes you can! Your wish has been granted!
My point was this: That “genie” should work for YOU, not for OpenAI, Target, or your health insurance provider. You.
Nearly three years after pointing out this structural problem with how AI was developing, I’m still waiting for any proof that what I sketched out will ever come to pass. Sure, it’s still possible, and yes, it might develop on its own thanks to the invisible hand guiding market competition. Then again, that’s what we thought would happen with search, social, and mobile, and instead of nirvana, we got enshittification. It’d be a damn shame if that’s where we end up in a world dominated by AI.
*Actually, the more interesting part of the OpenAI/Target news was how each company spun it: Target focused on how it now has a way to sell stuff inside a major AI app, and OpenAI promoted the news as a proof it has a major new enterprise customer in Target – who just happens to also be doing a shopping app. OpenAI is way behind Anthropic and Microsoft in the Enterprise market, and it knows it.
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