Hundreds of millions of users already use ChatGPT for their shopping to find, understand, and compare products. Users explore various options to find the right product that fits their needs, budget, and preferences. Today, OpenAI introduced a new shopping experience in ChatGPT that will help users in the shopping decision-making process.
This new shopping research in ChatGPT is powered by a version of GPT‑5 mini trained with reinforcement learning specifically for shopping tasks. OpenAI claims that this model is trained to read trusted sites and synthesize information from them to create high-quality product research and more.
Shopping research not only presents information about the products but also introduces product discovery in a new way. While it is researching about a product, it starts asking questions related to the product category to understand the user"s needs and refine the results. OpenAI claims that this experience works well in detail-heavy categories like electronics, beauty, home and garden, kitchen and appliances, and sports and outdoor.
For simple shopping questions, like confirming if a feature is available in a product or not, a regular ChatGPT response is still the best way. When users need comparisons including tradeoffs, then they should go for the shopping research option, which will take a few minutes to offer a well-researched answer.
Here"s how this feature works:
- Go to ChatGPT and prompt a shopping question.
- ChatGPT will suggest shopping research automatically if this question requires deep research.
- Users can tap it to begin the research.
- Users can also manually select ‘shopping research’ from the (+) menu to force ChatGPT.
Once the research is started, ChatGPT presents a visual interface where users can chat and share feedback on product options. ChatGPT will also ask questions like budget, feature preferences, and more.
If users have the ChatGPT memory feature turned on, the research can be personalized even further. For example, if a gamer starts asking about a laptop, ChatGPT will automatically consider researching more on gaming laptops.
This new Shopping research feature is rolling out today for ChatGPT mobile and web users who are logged in. Yes, OpenAI is making it available for all Free, Go, Plus, and Pro plan users. To help users with holiday shopping, all these users can enjoy nearly unlimited usage through the holidays. For ChatGPT Pro users, shopping research is available in ChatGPT Pulse, where it can offer personalized buyer’s guides proactively based on past conversations.