Walmart's AI Checkout Converted 3x Worse. The Interface Is Why.

Walmart put 200,000 products on ChatGPT's Instant Checkout. Users could browse and buy without leaving the chat window. The ultimate frictionless experience. The result: in-chat purchases converted at one-third the rate of clicking out to Walmart's website. Walmart's EVP Daniel Danker called the experience "unsatisfying." OpenAI killed Instant Checkout entirely. This isn't a Walmart problem. It's a pattern — and if you're building AI-powered tools, you're probably making the same mistake. The Perception Gap Is the Real Story In 2025, METR ran a randomized controlled trial with 16 experienced open-source developers. With AI coding tools, they completed tasks 19% slower. But they reported feeling 20% faster. That's a 39 percentage point gap between perception and reality. (A 2026 follow-up with more participants narrowed the speed difference, but the perception gap persisted. Developers consistently overestimated how much AI helped them.) 80% Follow Rate on Wrong Answers Shaw and Nave at