Hajra Naz
OpenAI is giving ChatGPT a serious upgrade to make online shopping easier and smarter. Starting Monday, when you use ChatGPT’s search feature to look for products, it won’t just give you a list of links. Now, it can show product recommendations with images, reviews, and direct links to where you can buy them all based on what you’re looking for.
Let’s say you’re hunting for new headphones. ChatGPT, something like “What are the best wireless headphones under $150?” and it’ll pull up tailored results. This feature is being tested in the electronics, home goods, fashion, and cosmetics sectors.
This update is available globally to everyone using the default GPT-4o model, including Pro, Plus, and Free users, even if you’re not logged in.
A New Rival to Google?
OpenAI is aiming to give Google some competition here. Shopping is a huge part of Google’s business, but its results are often cluttered with ads and sponsored listings. OpenAI wants ChatGPT’s search to feel more helpful and personal, without turning into another ad machine.
Just last week, ChatGPT processed more than a billion web searches, the company claims. That’s no small number.
Crucially, OpenAI claims that these shopping results are currently ad-free. The recommendations come from real data like product descriptions, pricing, and reviews pulled from third-party sources. OpenAI isn’t making any money from your clicks yet.
While CEO Sam Altman used to be strongly against ads in ChatGPT, he recently hinted he might be open to “tasteful” ones, like earning a small fee if someone buys a product through ChatGPT, but not selling better placement to the highest bidder.
Even More Personalization on the Way
Soon, Pro and users will also get memory-enabled shopping. That means ChatGPT can remember what you’ve searched or discussed before, and use that info to make even more personalized product suggestions. (This won’t be available in places like the EU, U.K., Switzerland, and a few others, at least for now.)
And there’s more: ChatGPT search will show trending questions as you type, like Google’s autocomplete. It’s also expanding into WhatsApp, so you can message ChatGPT directly to get answers and recommendations on the go.
This isn’t OpenAI’s first experiment with AI-powered shopping. Their earlier platform, Operator, could dig through web pages to help you find what you needed, but it was slower and more hands-off. With this new update, ChatGPT becomes a faster, smarter shopping assistant you can talk to like a friend.
