Prat Vemana, the chief information and product officer for Target, this week experienced something brand new as a shopper. He bought sleepwear through the retailer’s app in OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The C-suite executive’s new shopping behavior reflects a seismic shift happening for retailers as they head into Black Friday and a holiday season that’s projected to surpass $1 trillion in spending for the first time in the U.S. Shoppers who have spent the past few decades migrating to web-based shops, then to mobile commerce, and shopping and discovery on TikTok and other social media platforms, are evolving again. They are now beginning to embrace artificial intelligence, including AI web browsers like ChatGPT Atlas from OpenAI and Comet from Perplexity, as yet another new way to shop.
“Whether it’s ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini, we want to be there to help answer a question that the guest has,” says Vemana, who joined Target in 2022 with digital retail experience from big-box retailers The Home Depot and Staples. “The minute Target comes to their mind, we want to be there.”
By integrating with ChatGPT, Target is angling to get in front of the chatbot’s 800 million weekly active users with personalized recommendations from the retailer. Another generative AI bet that Target placed this month was the debut of an AI-powered gift finder that’s now on the company’s website and app, allowing shoppers to ask questions like “what’s a good present for my mother-in-law” and get a natural-language response.
