then 'Add to home screen'
then 'Add to home screen'
Get ready, online shoppers! OpenAI is making a big push into the world of e-commerce directly within ChatGPT. The company announced a significant upgrade to its ChatGPT search tool, specifically designed to enhance the online shopping experience for users.
Starting this week, when you use ChatGPT’s web search to look for products, you’ll now see a host of helpful features. The chatbot will offer product recommendations, display images and reviews for items, and provide direct links to web pages where you can make a purchase. OpenAI highlights that users can ask “super-specific questions in natural language” and receive “customized results”. Initially, OpenAI is focusing on categories like fashion, beauty, home goods, and electronics.
This new shopping functionality is rolling out in GPT-4o, which is the default AI model for ChatGPT. It’s becoming available for ChatGPT Pro, Plus, and even Free users, as well as users who are not logged in, on a global scale.
So, why is OpenAI stepping into shopping? The move is explicitly part of OpenAI’s effort to compete with rival Google. Their goal is to create a “better, more personalized experience to find products and information on the internet”. The article notes that online shopping is a critical business for Google, but suggests that the advertising market for priority placements has potentially impacted the quality of Google Search results over time.
OpenAI states that they are determining the shopping results independently, and crucially, ads are not part of this initial upgrade. The results are based on “structured metadata from third parties,” including details like pricing, product descriptions, and reviews. Interestingly, OpenAI says they won’t receive a kickback from purchases made through ChatGPT search at this time. While OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has historically been against ads in ChatGPT, he has recently indicated openness to “tasteful” advertising, specifically mentioning charging affiliate fees for purchases without selling priority placement. This suggests the current approach might evolve.
Looking ahead, OpenAI plans to integrate its memory feature with shopping for Pro and Plus users. This means ChatGPT could reference your past conversations to provide “highly personalized product recommendations”. While memory features for general web searches were previously updated, this specific shopping integration won’t be available in the EU, the U.K., Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein.
Alongside the shopping update, ChatGPT search is also getting other usability improvements, such as displaying trending searches when you start typing, similar to Google Search’s autocomplete. Furthermore, ChatGPT search has now arrived on WhatsApp, allowing users to query the chatbot for up-to-date answers via the messaging app.
This isn’t OpenAI’s first exploration into shopping assistance; they previously experimented with an AI “agent” platform called Operator. However, the new ChatGPT search integration is described as a much faster, more “hands-on experience” that still leverages natural language queries.
This upgrade marks a significant step for OpenAI as they continue to build out ChatGPT’s capabilities and directly challenge established players like Google in core areas like search and commerce. It will be fascinating to see how users adopt these new shopping features and how they evolve over time, especially concerning potential future monetization models like affiliate fees.
