Otto presented a ChatGPT plugin on October 20, 2026. The technical foundation is an interface endpoint based on the Model Context Protocol (MCP), which the group company Otto Group one.O developed. Customers call the plugin in ChatGPT using “@OTTO” and receive product recommendations from more than 19 million products. The purchase itself still takes place in the Otto Shop.
Since September 2026, Otto has also been one of the first test partners in Europe to run its own ad campaigns in ChatGPT. Whether offers from marketplace partners also appear in the plugin is not clear from Otto’s announcement.
What do retailers need to consider?
How the plugin works: Users install the plugin in ChatGPT via the “Plugins” tab and start the consultation with “@OTTO”. The plugin answers, for example, questions about the right washing machine. Payment doesn’t happen in ChatGPT; at the end, customers are redirected to the Otto Shop.
Role of marketplace partners made clear: Whether products from marketplace sellers are visible in the plugin is not clear from Otto’s announcement. In the future, AI agents should be able to retrieve prices and stock levels in real time via the interface and place orders. We recommend following Otto’s official communication.
Our take: Otto is positioning itself for AI-driven shopping journeys with the plugin and its own ads in ChatGPT. We recommend that retailers keep their product data complete and clean, since AI assistants base recommendations on this information.
