OpenAI slipped shopping into 800 million ChatGPT users’ chats − here’s why that matters

 

AI could soon be buying things for you – maybe without even asking. Andriy Onufriyenko/Moment via Getty Images

Your phone buzzes at 6 a.m. It’s ChatGPT: “I see you’re traveling to New York this week. Based on your preferences, I’ve found three restaurants near your hotel. Would you like me to make a reservation?”

You didn’t ask for this. The AI simply knew your plans from scanning your calendar and email and decided to help. Later, you mention to the chatbot needing flowers for your wife’s birthday. Within seconds, beautiful arrangements appear in the chat. You tap one: “Buy now.” Done. The flowers are ordered.

This isn’t science fiction. On Sept. 29, 2025, OpenAI and payment processor Stripe launched the Agentic Commerce Protocol. This technology lets you buy things instantly from Etsy within ChatGPT conversations. ChatGPT users are scheduled to gain access to over 1 million other Shopify merchants, from major household brand names to small shops as well.

As marketing researchers who study how AI affects consumer behavior, we believe we’re seeing the beginning of the biggest shift in how people shop since smartphones arrived. Most people have no idea it’s happening.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT takes on e-commerce with Etsy, Shopify partnership.

From searching to being served

For three decades, the internet has worked the same way: You want something, you Google it, you compare options, you decide, you buy. You’re in control.

That era is ending.

AI shopping assistants are evolving through three phases. First came “on-demand AI.” You ask ChatGPT a question, it answers. That’s where most people are today.

Now we’re entering “ambient AI,” where AI suggests things before you ask. ChatGPT monitors your calendar, reads your emails and offers recommendations without being asked.

Soon comes “autopilot AI,” where AI makes purchases for you with minimal input from you. “Order flowers for my anniversary next week.” ChatGPT checks your calendar, remembers preferences, processes payment and confirms delivery.

Each phase adds convenience but gives you less control.

The manipulation problem

AI’s responses create what researchers call an “advice illusion.” When ChatGPT suggests three hotels, you don’t see them as ads. They feel like recommendations from a knowledgeable friend. But you don’t know whether those hotels paid for placement or whether better options exist that ChatGPT didn’t show you.

Traditional advertising is something most people have learned to recognize and dismiss. But AI recommendations feel objective even when they’re not. With one-tap purchasing, the entire process happens so smoothly that you might not pause to compare options.

OpenAI isn’t alone in this race. In the same month, Google announced its competing protocol, AP2. Microsoft, Amazon and Meta are building similar systems. Whoever wins will be in position to control how billions of people buy things, potentially capturing a percentage of trillions of dollars in annual transactions.

What we’re giving up

This convenience comes with costs most people haven’t thought about.

Privacy: For AI to suggest restaurants, it needs to read your calendar and emails. For it to buy flowers, it needs your purchase history. People will be trading total surveillance for convenience.

Choice: Right now, you see multiple options when you search. With AI as the middleman, you might see only three options ChatGPT chooses. Entire businesses could become invisible if AI chooses to ignore them.

Power of comparing: When ChatGPT suggests products with one-tap checkout, the friction that made you pause and compare disappears.

It’s happening faster than you think

ChatGPT reached 800 million weekly users by September 2025, growing four times faster than social media platforms did. Major retailers began using OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol within days of its launch.

History shows people consistently underestimate how quickly they adapt to convenient technologies. Not long ago most people wouldn’t think of getting in a stranger’s car. Uber now has 150 million users.

Convenience always wins. The question isn’t whether AI shopping will become mainstream. It’s whether people will keep any real control over what they buy and why.

What you can do

The open internet gave people a world of information and choice at their fingertips. The AI revolution could take that away. Not by forcing people, but by making it so easy to let the algorithm decide that they forget what it’s like to truly choose for themselves. Buying things is becoming as thoughtless as sending a text.

In addition, a single company could become the gatekeeper for all digital shopping, with the potential for monopolization beyond even Amazon’s current dominance in e-commerce. We believe that it’s important to at least have a vigorous public conversation about whether this is the future people actually want.

Here are some steps you can take to resist the lure of convenience:

Question AI suggestions. When ChatGPT suggests products, recognize you’re seeing hand-picked choices, not all your options. Before one-tap purchases, pause and ask: Would I buy this if I had to visit five websites and compare prices?

Review your privacy settings carefully. Understand what you’re trading for convenience.

Talk about this with friends and family. The shift to AI shopping is happening without public awareness. The time to have conversations about acceptable limits is now, before one-tap purchasing becomes so normal that questioning it seems strange.

The invisible price tag

AI will learn what you want, maybe even before you want it. Every time you tap “Buy now” you’re training it – teaching it your patterns, your weaknesses, what time of day you impulse buy.

Our warning isn’t about rejecting technology. It’s about recognizing the trade-offs. Every convenience has a cost. Every tap is data. The companies building these systems are betting you won’t notice, and in most cases they’re probably right.

Yuanyuan (Gina) Cui, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Coastal Carolina University and Patrick van Esch, Associate Professor of Marketing, Coastal Carolina University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

Boys, bullying and belonging: understanding violent initiation at a South African school

 

Violence among learners in South African schools is a pressing concern. The minister of basic education told parliament in 2025 that hundreds of bullying cases had been reported in the first few weeks of the year. Since then, a series of alarming incidents have further drawn public attention.

While these occurrences mirror the high rates of violence in the country, they are also symptoms of systemic challenges within South African schools.

In 2015 the government introduced the National School Safety Framework to set minimum standards of safety and help schools understand and meet their responsibilities. It noted “the relationship between violence and other ecological factors relating to safe and caring schools by locating the school within its broader community”.

The framework suggests an awareness of structural determinants of violence in schools. But the sustained rise in incidents of interpersonal violence among learners points to the need for renewed attention, especially among schoolboys.

We are researchers whose interests include the anthropology of masculinities and health, and inclusive education and children’s geographies. In a recent study we encountered a practice in schools called ukufikisana: a kind of initiation through which senior boys assert their dominance over junior boys, often through violence and intimidation.

Derived from the isiZulu phrase ukufikisana emandleni (“testing each other’s power”), the practice shares similarities with “hazing” or bullying. But it also reveals the social and cultural dimensions of violence within schools. For instance, schoolboys described ukufikisana as how one becomes “fully a boy”, suggesting that the experience and exertion of violence are inevitable.

Our findings demonstrate how ukufikisana reinforces hierarchical gender relations and normalises violence as a means of navigating power and identity among boys. This is deeply entrenched in the school environment.

We suggest that solutions lie in the interplay of poverty, violence and gender norms.

What boys said about bullying

The study drew on a larger photovoice study exploring learners’ perspectives on violence in and around their school. It focused on 14 teenage boys (aged 14-17) attending a poorly resourced, co-educational school in Inanda, KwaZulu-Natal province. Inanda is an urban area characterised by poverty, unemployment and high levels of violence and crime. Its circumstances are a legacy of the policies applied to black South Africans under apartheid.

The study engaged boys as experts in their own lives, allowing them to share their experiences through images and films. We followed ethical protocols to get consent from schools, parents and learners. A social worker was available to provide support.

We prompted the participants to visually depict what violence looked like in their school environment.

Working in pairs, the boys captured images of simulated acts and experiences of violence using cellphones, discussed them and added captions. Then they presented this material in focus group discussions, which were recorded audiovisually and transcribed. We looked for themes in what was discussed.

The boys produced images showing the various ways that violence emerged at school. In one instance, two participants recreated a stabbing incident in which senior boys threatened to stab a junior boy.

Senior boys spoke of ukufikisana as an initiation practice that reinforced their position as “leaders”. One described the “younger and powerless boys” as “puppets”; another said “it’s to show them who is boss in this school”. Another spoke of it as a “baptism of fire”, saying:

they must always be prepared for it because it is coming for them … We show them that we are in charge of the school and they must respect that.

Younger boys told us:

They don’t listen when we try to stop them; they just threaten to beat us.

I was scared of them. So I just kept quiet and let them do whatever they wanted.

It hurt in more ways than one. One boy said:

Ukufikisana is not just what they do; it is also what they say to you … After that experience, I just kept to myself, and I am now more reserved at school.

What ukufikisana does

From our analysis of what the boys said, it appears that ukufikisana serves a dual function. For senior boys, it works as a rite of passage that solidifies their position as “fully boys”, and warrants their demonstration of physical strength, authority and control. For junior boys, the experience enforces submission and vulnerability, framing them as incomplete or “lesser boys”.

This dynamic normalises violence among boys in school settings. It also perpetuates rigid and harmful ways of being boys at school. At school, boys must always be ready to fight and to show their power through violence.

From this perspective, it’s possible to understand why violence may be prevalent and persisting in some South African schools.

For most boys, ukufikisana primes boys to think that bullying and the reinforcement of power through violence are key attributes for their lives. The participants described how this practice shaped their daily interactions, fostering a culture where dominance and submission were ingrained in their understanding of what it meant to be a man.

These findings align with broader concerns raised in recent anti-bullying research, globally and locally, which highlights the need for school approaches to address bullying.

What needs to change

We suggest that to effectively combat bullying, schools should move beyond punitive measures and zero-tolerance policies. Instead, they should adopt participatory and community-driven strategies that not only consider the interplay of poverty, violence and gender norms, but also allow learners to contribute to possible solutions to violence.

One way this might be done is through actively involving learners as equal stakeholders in school violence interventions.

Ndumiso Daluxolo Ngidi, Senior Lecturer, University of KwaZulu-Natal and Melusi Andile Dlamini, Lecturer in Anthropology, Rhodes University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

Darker Shade of Pale: why I wrote a book about my grandfather and how it changed my view of him

 

Leslie Swartz, Stellenbosch University and Deborah Posel, University of Cape Town

Deborah Posel, the founding director of the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, an interdisciplinary research institute in the humanities and social sciences in South Africa, has published a new book, Darker Shade of Pale: Shtetl to Colony. Using a combination of personal memoir and historical inquiry, it retraces the early 20th century migration of Jewish people from the Russian Empire to colonial South Africa through one man’s life.

The book uncovers the hidden story of global migration at the turn of the 20th century from the Jewish territories of the Russian Empire, The Pale of Settlement, to the British colony of South Africa. It follows the author’s grandfather, Maurice Posel, whose struggles and disappointments mirror those of countless others, using the intimacy of a single story to illuminate a much broader set of issues.

Leslie Swartz, a psychology scholar and the editor-in-chief of the South African Journal of Science, talks to Posel about the book.

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Leslie Swartz: A key feature for me is the vibrance and joy with which the book, though often dealing with painful issues, is written. I was interested to know how you came to write the book.

Deborah Posel: I had been working for years on a book – entitled Racial Material – on the politics of race and consumption. I had tons of material for the book, and I had absolutely loved researching it, including spending a year in the British Library. During that year, I was not looking for material on Jews, but Jews and Jewish issues kept crossing my page. I took note, but moved on.

I got back to South Africa, intending to write this hefty book. I began as did the COVID-19 lockdown. I started writing the first chapter of Racial Material as all our lives changed – in theory, an entirely free and unfettered time to write, but it was an unexpectedly joyless process.

At that moment, the conventions of academic writing were entirely alienating: nailing everything down in copious detail, reading all the available literature to find out what every single person had said about something in order to be able to make an argument, making sure that I had painstakingly chased after everything that could possibly be relevant, and very cautiously claiming only what this accumulation of evidence would tolerate. No doubt not every academic writes like that, but my academic writing is risk averse. I can and do make bold claims but only on the strength of this kind of effort.

Leslie Swartz: Which, may I say, distinguishes you from many social scientists in South Africa. This is part of why I love your work.

Deborah Posel: The other thing that I do when I write academically is that I make an argument – that’s at the core of academic writing, in my mind – and I sustain an argument that ties everything tightly together.

So I hauled myself through the first chapter but couldn’t face doing it again for the second one. I then decided to embrace the spirit of lockdown: do whatever you feel like doing, these are not normal times; here is an interregnum, so break out, cut loose. That’s when and how I started writing the Darker Shade of Pale book, having no clue where I was going, having no plan, no structure – a 180 degrees different approach from the way I would tackle academic writing.

The second big change for me was I wanted to write in a much more fluid way, more lyrically, more speculatively, more imaginatively, in ways that I thought would be inappropriate in academic writing. I started exploring literary devices that I probably would not use if I was writing what I would call an academic book.

Locked down and locked in, I broke out of my old way of writing. It was joyful. But it was also difficult, with new challenges. I now had two voices: as an historian, but also as a granddaughter. Initially I wasn’t sure how to speak in unison. Also, I had so little material about my grandfather’s life that I would call evidence – no letters, no diaries, very few people alive who could remember him, few photos. I decided early on that I didn’t want to fictionalise and make things up.

I wanted to create a narrative, however patchy and porous, that I knew to be reasonably accurate. That gave me my space. In fact, it required me to produce a story with gaps and shadows. Which is very explicit in the text. I make it clear that I’m giving my take on the possibilities that presented themselves to me.

I tried as far as possible to substantiate them, but I gave myself much more freedom to interpret and imagine. And along with that, writing about my grandfather‘s life became more emotional for me than would have been appropriate in an academic text. In this book, my feelings, though not the central concern, were current and live.

Leslie Swartz: I am glad that you “cut loose”. I view Darker Shade of Pale first and foremost as a cracking good read – a book I have earmarked to give to family members who are not academics but who are interested in migration, families, racial politics, marginalisation. For me it is also scholarly, painstakingly researched, important for any scholar of race and racialisation to read as well. In what way do you think it offers an understanding specifically of Jewish issues?

Deborah Posel: When I started writing this book I was so ignorant about Jewish history. I often asked myself: why, as a Jewish scholar of South Africa, had I paid absolutely no attention to Jews? Why had my intellectual peers also not done so? I had never considered questions about how you write Jews into South African history.

So I had a steep learning curve too, reading as much as I could find, and spending lots of time in South African archives, to produce a social history intertwined with my grandfather’s story. I tried to make sense of him, and his individual Jewishness, as made and unmade by his wider society.

It started with life in the shtetl (the name for a small town with a predominantly Jewish population in eastern Europe). I deliberately started there because most migration stories start when people get off the ship, as day one of the new life. But what did they come with? What was the headspace? What were the psyches that landed, and how well equipped or not were they psychologically to cope?

And I must say that I found the world of the shtetl staggeringly unexpected. Even the smallest shtetl was status-obsessed; failure was deeply shameful, even there.

The people who hadn’t made it in the shtetl were among those who left and tried to start new lives, another chance to make something of themselves. My great-grandfather was one of them, and he failed again. A shameful trajectory. It gave me an entirely different perspective on my grandfather, and his ill-fated son, unlikely, given his life in the shtetl, to realise the hopes and ambitions of his emigration. I had judged him all too readily and ignorantly. I started to feel sorry for him, which no doubt seeped into the writing.

Leslie: For me, the emotions have seeped into the writing and that is why this book is so good – disciplined and emotional at the same time. And an important read, I think, in world, Jewish and South African history.

Leslie Swartz, Professor, Stellenbosch University and Deborah Posel, Professor of Sociology, University of Cape Town

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

SOUTH AFRICA LIVING IN CUCKOO LAND -

 Finally, the book is published on Amazon. A collection of riveting articles about South Africa. I am posting the introduction and first chapter of the book. Thank you for your support.

INTRODUCTION

South Africa a land of golden opportunities and a land of conflicting situations. Throughout history, South Africa has been a land of diverse cultures, habits and traumatic times. From Colonial rule to a Union, and onto an independent state, a barren land transformed into a magnificent country. Development and infrastructure professed to be the best. A country rich in mineral resources and abundant wealth. Rejection, apathy and suppression of human rights. Terrorists, murders and protests for freedom of the majority. From apartheid to democracy a moment of reflection and creation of a rainbow nation. 1994 the year when a new constitution was born and freedom for all the people of South Africa, equal rights, and equal opportunities. A dream come true for many but the hope and desire to live a stable life was shattered by greed, corruption, and crime. The influential leaders grasped the opportunity to take a working infrastructure, a sound economy and virtually destroy the fundamental human rights of South African citizens.

The inhuman practices of tribalism continue in the modern world. Xenophobia attacks and outright disrespect for humans is a regular occurrence today. The high rise of crime, corruption and fraud have turned a once thriving country into the murder capital of the world. The minority groups within the country are forced into poverty, rejected in public service and blamed for the current problems of today. Young activists, continue to protest and the government blames all the failings on Apartheid.

This book is about the corruption, the greed, the murders and white genocide happening in South Africa. 

Chapter 1

Cuckoo Land – Apartheid

Apartheid was introduced into the South African culture in 1948 and demolished in 1994. Under apartheid racial divisions, created problems and the majority of South African suffered. The apartheid government continued to build a significant infrastructure and generates economic stability during this time. To relieve the pain of segregation among race groups, the government established townships and provided housing, education, medical and social structures. This did not absolve apartheid and kept segregation of race groups apart.  Apartheid did not stop the terrorist groups from fighting for freedom. Military training in communist countries and illegal weapons gave the terrorists groups the opportunity to fight for freedom. The main target of the terrorists were to bomb public places, select soft targets, women and children. Innocent people died, and border wars continued to expand while the Afrikaner government tried to keep the white people safe. The world called the terrorists ‘FREEDOM FIGHTERS’ and placed sanctions on South Africa. Negotiations with the African National Congress (ANC) terrorist group began and a new constitution was written to ensure ALL people will have freedom, liberty and peace.

South Africa is a majestically ever-changing land of opportunities, diverse cultures and breathtakingly beautiful, scenic landscapes. South Africa is an egalitarian rainbow nation with the most official languages in the world dominated by the communication and conflict among the different ethnic groups. English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa, Sesotho, Setswana, Sepedi, Xitsonga, siSwati, isiNdebele, and Tshivenda are the official languages, and the history and culture of each ethnic group is unique to the different people of the land.

The nationality of South African people is described as white, black, Zulu or Afrikaans people. The populace of this country experience difficulty in referring to themselves as South Africans. The identification of people is never an ordinary South African; it is extended by Indian, Colored, Zulu, Xhosa or Black.

There is no clear signal if South Africa will become a united with one cohesive people. South Africa is now a democratic country offering freedom for all its citizens with equal opportunities. Yet the constant struggle to recognize this freedom is a raging problem for people who continue to blame the past history and remain unforgiving within different ethnic groups.

South Africa needs strong governance and is lacking the ability to manage and administer the wealth to its people in the form of service deliveries, housing, and job creation. During the apartheid years, the taxpayers were potentially the biggest collection of state income and the use of funds remained evident among the people. Citizens received appropriate education; housing and social services were top class. Even though the majority of blacks at that time, who did not have the right to move around, received a fair portion of the public services, hospitals, schools and so forth were available to all.

The democracy allowed all South Africans the opportunity to freedom and access to all shared facilities of the past. Over the last twenty years, these services have declined into a dreadful state and have become more of a hindrance than a help. The taxpayers’ money is not working for the people, and the squandering of public funds is potentially the biggest threat to the security of the country.

Economically the only solution for the country is to establish a proper competent government is placed into power. A government that will work for the people, improve the gap of poverty, and provide job creation, thereby ensuring a reasonably decent life for all. Removing the damning structures of ethnic conflict, allowing talented, experienced, and skilled people to fill posts irrespective of their race, culture or religion.

Blaming apartheid for the current problems is not only unfair; it is an exhibition of weakness by the current government. Apartheid was not acceptable and admittedly a system that should never have been implemented

The last twenty years have given the country an opportunity for improvement, development, and social equality. This has not happened, and apartheid cannot be blamed for the current failures. There are social equality opportunities for every South African, and it is the individual who must make the change. The government does not promote equality and continues to blame apartheid for any problem they cannot control. The question that needs to be answered is what did the ANC party know about democracy. Is democracy only the right to vote, or does democratic government, place the people at the heart of their leadership. Not so in South Africa, while the ANC grow stronger toward a socialist government, the pillars of democracy slowly fall.

HERE IS THE LINK TO VIEW THE BOOK ON AMAZON.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0153EW4M4?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

For All My Friends

Beautiful people who drifted in and out of my life. Friends who shared their thoughts listened to mine and gave so much inspiration. Thank you.

Gaza and ANC mission to the ICC

 

 

 Johan Erasmus on Gaza and ANC mission to the ICC. Was it planned or just stupid? Lots of money changed hands, that is for sure. But, who will gain the most?