Khaberni - In a surprising move, Amazon has banned the "OpenAI" ChatGPT platform from accessing its website, disrupting the use of the new "Shopping Research" feature, which was launched a few days ago with the aim of enhancing online search and shopping.
As a result of this change, ChatGPT is no longer able to display product listings, prices, or reviews on Amazon in real-time, which means the new feature won't be able to provide recommendations based on store data or display any available deals or discounts.
The decision comes at a critical time coinciding with the peak shopping season and "Black Friday" promotions, which are some of the company's largest annual sales events, according to "Thomas Jayde".
What is the "Shopping Research" feature?
The new feature from "OpenAI" offers an experience similar to a smart shopping advisor; it combines the user's preferences, budget, and needs, then extracts product specifications, reviews, and availability from various online sources to provide a customized recommendation list.
The feature is available to users of the free and paid versions of "ChatGPT" worldwide, with increased usage limits during the holiday season to support gift and major purchase research.
Why did Amazon ban the feature?
The decision was first spotted by researcher Josas Kazukens on "LinkedIn", who noticed an update in Amazon's "robots.txt" file that includes barring several "OpenAI" tools, including the "ChatGPT-User" for direct browsing and "OAI-SearchBot" used in searching.
According to the "Modern Retail" report, Amazon aims with this move to protect its commercial data, from product pages and prices to reviews and availability of goods, and to prevent their use to build shopping models on competing platforms, as the ban means that ChatGPT will not be able to index Amazon's content or use it in real time to feed its recommendations.
The report also highlighted concerns within the company that external "artificial intelligence agents" might collect its data and direct consumers to shop from other sites, while Amazon is enhancing its own artificial intelligence services, led by Alexa+.
Amazon CEO, Andy Jassy, confirmed to "Modern Retail" that the company is indeed in talks with external shopping agents, suggesting the possibility of "finding ways to collaborate" in the future, but with a priority for Amazon's own services.
How does the decision affect users?
"OpenAI" promotes the "Shopping Research" feature as a tool capable of analyzing the market and providing a "personal shopping guide within minutes", yet the company's rules state that its crawling tools "respect the robots.txt file", meaning that any site barring entry will be completely ignored.
"Modern Retail" tests show how the ban decision reflects on the user experience; when requesting recommendations for specifically Amazon products, ChatGPT searches other stores and advises the user to manually check Amazon, explicitly informing them that it cannot access the site.
With the continuation of the ban, the "Shopping Research" feature will still be able to provide broad comparisons and customized recommendations, but it will not include Amazon data, requiring users to manually review prices and deals, especially "Black Friday" offers and "Prime" perks through the company's site or app.
