OpenAI has announced that users can now shop for products right inside ChatGPT, marking the latest step by the artificial intelligence startup to make its popular chatbot more useful and directly compete with rivals like Google. With the new shopping option, people can quickly compare different products and click a link presented within ChatGPT to finish buying something on a store's external website. For now, this feature works for a few product types, including electronics, fashion, beauty, and home goods, but OpenAI has plans to add more categories down the road. This tool is available to everyone who uses ChatGPT, whether they are signed in or not.
According to OpenAI's announcement, these shopping improvements are designed to make finding, comparing, and buying products simpler and faster. The company highlighted that users will see improved product results with visual details, pricing information, and reviews, along with direct links to buy. OpenAI emphasized that the product results are chosen independently and are not ads.
Google has a long history in connecting users with products. Google launched Shopping many years ago to give users a dedicated place to find, compare, and buy things online, and it is a major part of Google's business model, relying heavily on paid listings from merchants. This new move by OpenAI feels like a direct challenge to that established system, positioning ChatGPT as an alternative starting point for online shopping.
Search is quickly becoming one of the most popular ways people use the chatbot, according to OpenAI (via TechCrunch), with over a billion web searches happening via ChatGPT just last week. As large language model chatbots increasingly grow in popularity and capability, ad agencies are starting to take notice and are actively working on ways to get brands featured within the AI's responses. The thinking is that if people are getting direct answers from AI instead of clicking through traditional search results, brands need to find a new way to be seen.
Alongside the shopping feature, OpenAI announced several related updates. ChatGPT now offers improved citations, allowing multiple sources to back a response and adding visual highlights that show exactly which parts of an answer are tied to which citation. This makes it easier for users to verify information and dive deeper into topics. The AI lab also introduced faster search suggestions with trending topics and autocomplete to speed up queries, along with search capabilities for ChatGPT on WhatsApp.
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