Really Futuristic Commerce
Introducing Visual Response
From AI-powered search to chatbots on retailer websites, agentic commerce is no longer a futuristic concept. More than half of consumers use AI agents to compare brands, features, and prices. The shift is clear: consumers want dynamic, personalized journeys, not static product pages that fail to fully capture physical goods.
Even so, frontier AI companies have acknowledged they can’t deliver agentic commerce alone. OpenAI, for instance, dropped its Instant Checkout feature in March and will now work directly with retailers to create dedicated shopping apps within ChatGPT. “What we're trying to do is just make checkout a flexible thing that merchants own, and that can be in the apps that they build in ChatGPT or linking out to their sites,” Neel Ajjarapu, OpenAI’s product lead for commerce initiatives, said in an interview. The company has also decided not to prioritize its Shopping Research tool as a standalone feature, in part because the model took too long to load answers to users’ questions.
OpenAI’s challenges with e-commerce features highlight an important reality: agentic commerce lacks the kind of immersive, concierge-style online shopping experience that consumers are looking for.
Customers don’t want chatbots that produce waterfalls of black-and-white text. They need visual context—imagery, comparisons, interactive displays—that help them see and compare options quickly.
That’s where eko’s Visual Response comes in.
Imagine you’re shopping for the best vacuum to eliminate cat hair around your house. You navigate to ChatGPT and type “What's the best vacuum for getting rid of cat hair on my carpet?” The result? Information from multiple, untrustworthy, sources and product specifics pulled from industry standards, not the item itself. And rather than a comprehensive view of the vacuum, you get static images and walls of text comparing three different vacuums across multiple retailer websites.
eko’s Visual Response works differently. Our tool unlocks conversational shopping that includes relevant images and video, intelligent product information, and accurate specifications. When a customer asks “What's the best vacuum for getting rid of cat hair on my carpet?” VisualResponse returns a widescreen video of the Dyson Animal 3 Upright Vacuum, including 360-degree visuals and an up-close view of a visual of the brush bar as it spins. It also includes a short, readable caption with the most important details in bold.
Follow up questions? Visual Response has those covered, too. Maybe you want to know more about the internal components of the vacuum. Type “how does the filter work?” into the prompt and you’ll get high-resolution images of the filter itself, as well as where it’s positioned within the vacuum. Thanks to eko’s hands-on product capture, you’ll also get accurate information about the Dyson, including the fact that its filtration traps 99.97% of particles as small as 0.3 microns. How’s that for specificity?
The future of e-commerce belongs to experiences that eliminate uncertainty. Visual Response brings together accurate product information with rich, context-driven visuals that result in fundamentally higher-quality transactions. In a market where shoppers are often oversaturated with options—some of which are artificially generated—the ability to guide customers to the right decision with certainty becomes a key competitive advantage.
Ready to let AI show rather than tell? Learn more about Visual Response here.
