GoKawiilEtsy is known for its marketplace of handcrafted goods, but despite that human touch, the company wants its shoppers to adopt AI.
On Tuesday, Etsy launched a beta version of its app in the OpenAI-owned ChatGPT. Once connected to the ChatGPT Etsy app, all you have to do is tag @Etsy and provide a prompt for it to generate results that can be compared or opened on the Etsy website.
In an Etsy News blog post, Chief Product and Technology Officer Rafe Colburn wrote that the ChatGPT app "offers shoppers a deeper view into sellers' items" and can help when nuance matters.
"At the same time, the Etsy app in ChatGPT is poised to give us earlier insight into the moments Etsy is relevant in a shopper's journey, opening the door to understanding how and when shoppers choose to use conversational search," Colburn wrote.
In other words, while the ChatGPT Etsy app helps customers locate specific items, it also provides Etsy with information about when people choose to use both ChatGPT and Etsy while shopping.
I took ChatGPT's Etsy app for a test run
After connecting the Etsy app, I told @Etsy that I'm looking for a handmade birdhouse under $50. It responded with five listings showing the item name, price, seller name, rating and whether there's free shipping. There were also buttons above the listings I could click to filter by handmade, personalized, under $25 and free shipping.
I found it interesting that I could filter by "handmade," even though that was a keyword in my prompt. When I selected the filter, only one result disappeared: a PDF for a DIY birdhouse.
What it looks like when you use the Etsy app on ChatGPT to find a handmade, under-$50 birdhouse. ChatGPT/Screenshot by CNET
However, I received these same filter options with different prompts -- a birthday gift for a cat-loving friend and a Mother's Day gift under $100 -- so they seem to be there by default. One exception: For the Mother's Day gift under $100, the filter for "under $25" changed to "under $50," meaning it will increase as your budget increases.
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