OpenAI is updating ChatGPT search, its web search tool in ChatGPT, to give users an improved online shopping experience, the company announce Monday, TechCrunch reported.
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.
Open AI 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 by 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 searchers in ChatGPT last week, the company told TechCrunch.
The Verge reported:OpenAI is improving ChatGPT’s web search capabilities, to make the AI chatbot a more useful tool for shopping.
People already use ChatGPT to do research around products, but before these updates, ChatGPT didn’t make it easy to understand up-to-date prices or see visual images of the results. Adam Fry, OpenAI’s ChatGPT search project lead, told The Verge in an interview. With this new update, a shopping query might pull up a more useful result that includes things like product cards with images, prices, and start ratings in an easy-to-read format.
The recommendations are organic — there are no ads and the results aren’t sponsored, according to Fry. However, OpenAI works with partners to ensure ChatGPT is showing up-to-date prices.
If you click on a product card, a Google Shopping-like sidebar will pop up with more details on places you can buy the product and information pulled from user reviews across sites like Amazon, Best Buy, and Reditt. The cards can also show a button to “Ask about this,” and if you click it, you can ask ChatGPT a specific question about that product.
WIRED reported: OpenAI announced today that users will soon be able to buy products through ChatGPT. The rollout of shopping buttons for AI-powered search queries will come to everyone, whether they are a signed-in user or not. Shoppers will not be able to to check out inside ChatGPT; instead they will be redirected to the merchant’s website to finish the transaction.
In a prelaunch demo for WIRED, Adam Fry, the ChatGPT search product lead at OpenAI, demonstrated how the updated user experience could be used to help people using the tool for product research decide which espresso machine or office chair to buy. The product recommendations shown to prospective shoppers are based on what ChatGPT remembers about a user’s preferences as well as product reviews pulled from across the web.