OpenAI unveiled a way for retailers to create artificial intelligence (AI) shopping assistants in Shopify. With a few clicks, developers can now connect the Storefront Managed Compute Platform (MCP) server directly to the OpenAI Responses API to build agents that can search for products, add items to a cart, and generate checkout links — all without requiring authentication. Go to the OpenAI Playground, under Tools, add MCP Server. Click on Shopify and add your store’s URL to create the AI shopping assistant. Now when users type, “I am looking for a lightweight men’s button up shirt for a vacation,” for example, the assistant will search for options from your inventory to show the shopper. If the shopper picks one of the options, the assistant can automatically move it to checkout. The move reflects OpenAI’s broader strategy to move deeper into offering shopping capabilities. Rival Perplexity already offers a shopping assistant within its AI chatbot. Shopify is one of the merchants whose products can be found through Perplexity. Google introduced Gemini Robotics On-Device, an AI model that runs directly on robots without the need for an internet connection. Amazon unveiled DeepFleet, an AI model that acts as a traffic controller for warehouse robots, improving travel efficiency by 10%.