OpenAI Adds Shopping to ChatGPT in a Challenge to Google

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 check out inside of 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. Fry says ChatGPT users are already running over a billion web searches per week, and that people are using the tool to research a wide breadth of shopping categories, like beauty, home goods, and electronics. The produc ... Read full article.