AI Shopping Agents (ChatGPT, Perplexity) and What They Mean for Affiliate Commission Tracking

What counts as an "AI shopping agent" right now?

An AI shopping agent is an AI chatbot or search engine that doesn't just answer a question, but actively helps the shopper move toward a purchase — from recommending and comparing products to, in some cases, completing the payment itself. The main examples as of August 2026 are ChatGPT (OpenAI), Perplexity, Google AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot. The four differ sharply in how far they actually go: some are, in practice, an advanced search engine that ends by sending the shopper on to the merchant's own site; others can, in certain cases, complete the payment itself inside their own interface. That difference is this article's entire tracking problem in one sentence — see the next section.

The core problem in one sentence

Classic affiliate and influencer tracking assumes a specific sequence: a click on a link → a cookie gets set → the shopper visits the merchant's own site → the purchase happens on that site, in a browser session carrying a referrer or UTM parameter. An AI agent can break every link in that chain — there's no click, no referrer ever reaches the merchant's site, and sometimes the shopper's browser never visits the merchant's domain at all. Whether your tracking link survives depends entirely on which of three models is in play.

Three checkout models — and what each does to a tracking link

The 2026 pivot: OpenAI already pulled back from in-chat checkout

ChatGPT's "Instant Checkout" launched on 29 September 2025, built on the newly-developed Agentic Commerce Protocol (see the ACP/UCP section below), with Etsy as the first merchant and a handful of Shopify brands (including Glossier, SKIMS and Spanx) added in the weeks after. But by March 2026, OpenAI had already started de-emphasizing the feature — confirmed by multiple independent sources (CNBC, 24 March 2026; Checkout.com, 20 April 2026): the company is moving away from letting the shopper complete payment inside the chat itself, and shifting its own emphasis to product discovery, while the purchase itself moves into the merchant's own checkout experience — either by sending the shopper on to the merchant's site, or by showing the merchant's own checkout flow embedded in ChatGPT via an SDK. OpenAI itself has said the original version of Instant Checkout didn't offer the flexibility it wants to provide, so merchants can now use their own checkout experiences while OpenAI focuses its efforts on product discovery. Reporting also points to weak merchant uptake — something like a dozen Shopify brands ever went live out of millions of potentially eligible sellers. The practical result: the one model that actually threatens a classic tracking link (in-chat checkout with no visit to the merchant's site at all) is, as of this writing, a minority of ChatGPT's actual shopping traffic — not because the underlying problem has been solved, but because OpenAI itself de-prioritized the model that caused it.

What the commission model actually ended up costing

Early in the process, OpenAI's leadership floated a model with roughly a 2% affiliate-style commission on purchases that followed a product recommendation in ChatGPT. What actually shipped was different: starting 26 January 2026, OpenAI introduced a 4% transaction fee for Shopify merchants using Instant Checkout — on top of Shopify's normal payment-processing fees. The fee is opt-in (the merchant chooses whether to enable Instant Checkout, or instead send the shopper on to the ordinary online store, which avoids the fee but adds one extra click), and new merchants get a 30-day fee-free trial starting from their first qualifying order. It's worth keeping straight that the 4% applied specifically to the in-chat checkout model OpenAI itself started de-prioritizing shortly after — not a general tax on being found or recommended by ChatGPT.

Perplexity's opposite bet: zero commission

Perplexity has taken the opposite approach entirely. Its "Merchant Program" charges the merchant no fees, commission or listing charges at all — the program is funded by Perplexity Pro subscription revenue, not a share of transactions. A merchant joins for free by sharing its product catalog (in Google Shopping CSV format via SFTP, backed by structured Schema.org Product markup on its own pages); US-based Shopify stores are synced automatically with no separate application. At the point of purchase, US-based Perplexity Pro subscribers can use a "Buy with Pro" button that completes the payment using their saved shipping and billing details — meaning Perplexity's checkout model, in practice, resembles ChatGPT's original in-chat model more than the newer redirect model: the shopper's browser never lands on the merchant's site, so an ordinary tracking link has no click to catch.

ACP vs. UCP: the two protocols behind agent checkout

Two open standards sit behind the technical side of agent-driven commerce, and it's worth knowing the difference:

The central point for tracking: UCP's order webhooks are exactly what lets a platform like Shopify show, in the merchant's own admin, which AI channel a given order came from — Shopify's "Agentic Storefronts" already lets merchants filter orders by whether they came from ChatGPT, Copilot, AI Mode or similar. But that's channel-level, not creator-level: none of the published specifications tie an order webhook back to which specific influencer or affiliate link originally started the shopper's conversation.

What this means for your tracking link, specifically

Make Influence's own tracking method, as described in how influencer tracking actually works, is a 30-day cookie combined with up to 3 months of IP fallback. Both mechanisms assume the shopper's browser actually visits the merchant's site via the tracked link. If the shopper instead completes a purchase without ever landing on the merchant's domain in a trackable session — Perplexity's "Buy with Pro" is currently the clearest example — neither the cookie nor the IP fallback has anything to attach the sale to. That's related to the gap already documented for in-app browsers and GA4's own lookback windows (see why influencer sales don't show up in Google Analytics), but reached a different way: the click isn't lost in transit — it's never generated in the first place.

A discount code holds up structurally better than a tracking link in exactly this scenario: a code needs no click at all, only that it gets entered at checkout — by the shopper themselves, or in principle by an agent that's been told the code. A tracking link requires a click event to fire at all; a discount code only requires that it shows up in the order itself. See discount codes vs tracking links for the full comparison of the two mechanisms — this AI-agent angle is one more reason to consider a code as a supplement, not just a technical detail.

Make Influence has no agentic-commerce-specific tracking today, and doesn't offer server-to-server tracking either (see server-side and cookieless tracking in influencer marketing) — that applies here too. The honest state of play as of August 2026 is that fully agent-completed checkout is still a minority of total AI-assisted shopping, now that OpenAI itself has de-prioritized its own in-chat model. The real exposure for a typical campaign today is therefore smaller than "AI is killing affiliate tracking" headlines suggest — but the direction UCP's growing backing points in is worth watching, not ignoring.

Worked example (hypothetical)

The numbers below are hypothetical, built only to demonstrate the mechanism — not a real Make Influence customer case, and not a benchmark.

Imagine a creator whose tracking link normally drives 100 purchases a month at the store they promote. If 20 of those 100 shoppers instead ask an AI agent to complete an in-chat purchase, and the merchant has no mechanism that routes those 20 orders back to the creator's link, the creator loses commission on all 20 sales — not because the shoppers didn't buy, but because no click ever reached the merchant's site. Had those same 20 shoppers used a discount code at checkout instead — regardless of whether they arrived via an AI agent — the sale could still be attributed correctly, because the code doesn't need a click to be registered.

Decision framework: what to actually do today

• IF your brand's sales run through a Shopify store → check whether Shopify's "Agentic Storefronts" already shows AI-channel attribution in the admin, and whether that number lines up with what your own tracking link shows.
• IF you promote a merchant that has specifically enabled ChatGPT's Instant Checkout or Perplexity's "Buy with Pro" → ask directly whether creator/affiliate commission is still paid on those in-agent sales, since the AI platform's own fee (4% to OpenAI, 0% to Perplexity) is a completely separate matter from what the brand chooses to pay a creator.
• IF you want to make your tracking more resilient to this shift without switching platforms → pair your tracking link with a discount code, exactly as recommended elsewhere in this Academy, because the code doesn't depend on a click event.
• Don't assume this already affects Danish shoppers or merchants — see the FAQ.

FAQ

Does an AI agent automatically break my tracking link when it completes a purchase?

No — it depends on which of the three models above the merchant and the AI service use. If the agent sends the shopper on to the merchant's own site, the tracking link usually survives. If the agent completes payment itself, inside its own interface, without the shopper ever visiting the merchant's site, it usually breaks.

Is ChatGPT's Instant Checkout still live?

Partially. OpenAI de-prioritized the feature starting around March 2026 and now emphasizes product discovery, with the purchase itself increasingly happening on the merchant's own site or in a merchant-owned checkout experience embedded in ChatGPT.

Does Perplexity pay affiliates or creators directly for a sale?

No. Perplexity's Merchant Program charges the merchant nothing, and whether a brand shares any of that sale with the creator who originally promoted the product is a separate, brand-side commission decision — just as on any other channel.

Is any of this available to Danish shoppers or merchants yet?

Not confirmed. Every source found for ChatGPT's Instant Checkout and Perplexity's "Buy with Pro" describes a rollout limited to US-based users/subscribers. None of the sources examined name Denmark or the Nordics specifically.

Does a discount code hold up better than a tracking link when an AI agent is involved?

Structurally, yes, in the specific scenario where the shopper never clicks through to the merchant's site: a code only needs to be entered at checkout, while a tracking link needs a click event to be registered at all. That doesn't make a code immune to other weaknesses — see discount codes vs tracking links for the full trade-off.

How long will these figures and dates hold up?

This is a fast-moving space. Commission rates, which merchants are enrolled, and which checkout model ends up dominant can all change again — re-verify the specific figures before citing them as current after a longer period has passed.