You can now tempt fate and give your banking information to ChatGPT

The new Wallet feature will allow its AI agents to make purchases on your behalf.

By Lawrence Bonk
A logo over a green background. OpenAI
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OpenAI just announced ChatGPT Wallet, a payment feature that enables its newly-released Dots AI agents to make purchases on behalf of users. Of course, that requires handing over your payment information to a chatbot, which carries some risk. OpenAI says that users only have to input card information once and then it's good to go.

The company has built some guardrails into the system to help attract those wary of letting hallucination-prone chatbots handle their personal finances. First of all, the bots are allowed to run loose and gather up stuff to purchase, but the human has to finalize everything.

Each purchase has to be approved via a security check like Face ID or a fingerprint scan, similar to how Meta Muse operates. An approval reportedly "creates a clear record of the purchase" which could help with dispute mitigation down the line. The store doesn't receive the actual card information, but rather is provided a "payment token" which is a "substitute for the user's actual card details."

OpenAI has partnered with American Express, Mastercard and Visa for this endeavor. The company promises that this program allows cardholders to maintain their current credit card rewards points and protections.

"Our goal here is to really focus on merchants and our network partners and start building out a really great foundation that's safe and easy to use," Chaya Nayak, who leads product for monetization and payments at OpenAI, told CNBC.

The company is not taking a cut of any purchases made through the system just yet. That should help keep prices low, for now, though it'll most certainly become a revenue stream for OpenAI down the line. We all know modern tech companies like to take the "drug dealer" approach to things. It'll be cheap or free at first until the company slams down the cost hammer in a year or two. Remember how affordable Uber used to be?

ChatGPT Wallet is rolling out right now, though only to US-based Pro subscribers aged 18 and older. The company promises that it'll "work with businesses, banks and payment networks to learn from early use and expand availability" in the future.

The influx of AI agents running around and making purchases on their own has certainly caused some hiccups in certain corners of the internet. Many companies are outright banning the use of these agents to make purchases, such as Delta and United Airlines. Amazon is doing the same thing, but probably less out of an abundance of caution and more out of jealousy that its own chatbots aren't quite there yet.

One last thing. Why are these AI shopping agents so cute? They always look like Pixar characters or something. It's a bit creepy.

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