OpenAI is updating ChatGPT search, its web search tool in ChatGPT, to give users an improved online shopping experience, the company announced Monday.
When ChatGPT users search for products, the chatbot will now offer a few recommendations, present images and reviews for those items, and include direct links to webpages where users can buy the products. OpenAI says users can ask hyper-specific questions in natural language and receive customized results. To start, OpenAI is experimenting with categories including fashion, beauty, home goods, and electronics.
OpenAI is rolling out the feature in the default AI model for ChatGPT, GPT-4o, today for ChatGPT Pro, Plus, and Free users, as well as logged-out users around the globe.
The ChatGPT search update is part of OpenAI’s effort to compete with rival Google by creating a better, more personalized experience to find products and information on the internet. Online shopping is one of Google’s most important businesses, but the advertising market to buy priority placements in Google Search has also contributed to the product’s declining quality over the years.
OpenAI claims its search product is growing rapidly. Users made more than a billion web searches in ChatGPT last week, the company told TechCrunch.
OpenAI says it’s determining ChatGPT shopping results independently, and notes that ads are not part of this upgrade to ChatGPT search. The shopping results will be based on structured metadata from third parties, such as pricing, product descriptions, and reviews, according to OpenAI. The company won’t receive a kickback from purchases made through ChatGPT search.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has historically been against ads in ChatGPT, but in a recent interview with Stratechery’s Ben Thompson, he changed his tune slightly. Altman said he’d be open to “tasteful” advertising in which OpenAI charges affiliate fees for purchases made through ChatGPT but doesn’t sell priority placement in their results.
Soon, OpenAI says it will integrate its memory feature with shopping for Pro and Plus users, meaning ChatGPT will reference a user’s previous chats to make highly personalized product recommendations. The company previously updated ChatGPT to reference memory when making web searches broadly. However, these memory features won’t be available to users in the EU, the U.K., Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein.
Alongside this update, ChatGPT search will now display trending searches when users start typing a question, much like Google Search’s autocomplete feature. Additionally, ChatGPT search has come to WhatsApp, allowing users to message the company’s chatbot to get up-to-date answers.
OpenAI has previously explored shopping features via its AI “agent” platform, Operator, which takes anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes to browse dozens of web pages and find relevant products for users. ChatGPT search with shopping is a much faster, hands-on experience, and one that still allows users to search for products using natural language queries.