Target Expands AI Strategy With ChatGPT App
Target and OpenAI have expanded their partnership to bring an AI-powered, conversational shopping experience directly into ChatGPT, giving guests a curated path to discovery, basket-building and checkout across multiple fulfillment options.
The experience, launching next week in beta, comes one month after Walmart and OpenAI announced a similar partnership. The moves signal how retailers are embedding AI not just in digital touchpoints, but across enterprise operations to enhance guest experiences. It also builds on Target’s broader strategy to embed AI across its business.
About the Experience
The new Target app experience in ChatGPT allows shoppers to request personalized recommendations, build multi-item baskets and complete purchases using Drive Up, Order Pickup or shipping.
For example, a guest could tag Target in ChatGPT and ask for help planning a “holiday family movie night,” and instantly receive curated suggestions — such as cozy blankets and candles or snacks and slippers — with the ability to purchase directly through Target’s platform.
Additional enhancements, coming soon, include Target Circle integration and same-day delivery options, according to news releases from both companies. The experience is designed to feel as intuitive and helpful as interacting with a store associate while leveraging the efficiency of AI.
“Everything starts with the guest, and that means meeting them wherever they are, including emerging spaces like ChatGPT, where millions of consumers visit,” Prat Vemana, EVP and chief information and product officer at Target, said in a media release. “Our goal is simple: Make every interaction feel as natural, helpful and inspiring as chatting with a friend.”
Target’s Broader Efforts to Scale AI
The ChatGPT app builds on Target’s broader AI strategy, which extends from guest-facing tools to internal operational efficiencies. Teams across Target are using ChatGPT Enterprise — securely connected to proprietary data — to speed workflows, boost productivity and free employees to focus on creative and strategic tasks.
Other areas of business AI is embedded include:
- Agent Assist and Store Companion: Helps store teams and service centers respond to guest questions instantly (e.g., price matching and returns).
- Shopping Assistant and Gift Finder: Guides guests to personalized product recommendations based on interests, occasion, age, etc.
- Guest Assist and AI Chatbots like JOY: Enables vendor partners and guests to get answers from a 3,000-plus FAQ knowledge base, supplemented by human support when needed.
“Technology is helping define Target as a company that doesn’t just use AI, but runs on AI,” Vemana added. “It enables faster response to trends, powers guest interactions with more ease and joy, and gives teams intelligent tools that reduce friction so they can focus on what matters most: serving our guests.”
AI’s Growing Role
Target joins more than one million OpenAI business customers using the platform to evolve core operations and customer-facing products, according to the company. The retailer’s approach reflects a broader shift in retail: AI is no longer just for automation or experimentation, but is becoming foundational to improving personalization, accelerating product discovery and optimizing operations at scale.
In a recent session at P2PI LIVE & Expo, a panel argued that marketers should prepare for a future in which marketing decisions can no longer be made in isolation. Instead, AI-enabled systems will increasingly force alignment across functions — and elevate marketing leaders who can operate as enterprise-wide growth architects, not just brand storytellers.
