What's that you say?
You didn't want a $10,000 statue of Babylon Bee editor Kyle Mann made out of used popsicle sticks?
Well, ChatGPT has your Visa card now, and it was pretty sure you did, so it went ahead and made that purchase for you.
Yep, this is really happening π
According to the Associated Press, Visa announced that they're turning over customers' purchasing decisions to ChatGPT.
Betting that people will soon grow more comfortable having artificial intelligence agents shop for groceries, plane tickets or diapers on their behalf, payments giant Visa said Wednesday that it has embedded its payment network inside of ChatGPT, empowering the chatbot to independently shop and complete transactions.
It means AI agents can not only recommend products but complete the purchase on the user's behalf at potentially any merchant that accepts Visa.
Visa says the program will have guardrails like spending limits and approval steps.
It will take time for people to fully trust AI agents to do their shopping, Jack Forestell, chief product and strategy officer at Visa, acknowledged. At first, Visa expects the majority of transactions to still loop in humans, with AI agents sending a notification for consumers to approve the actual purchase.
βNow, imagine you do that a thousand times over the course of some period of time,' he said. βAnd then your agent says, "Do you want me to just not check?"'
Banks and retailers are also worried about the move, as they will bear the brunt of any mistakes.
If a customer says they didn't authorize a purchase, the retailer eats the cost of the chargeback, so what does Visa have to lose?
Visa's biggest competitor, Mastercard, has also been introducing its own AI-shopping features to its payment network on a smaller scale.
Welcome to the (insane) future.
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