OpenAI improves ChatGPT Search by adding shopping functionality

Where do you buy your products online? Amazon? Google? How about ChatGPT? OpenAI is adding shopping to ChatGPT Search to challenge the competition.

AI chatbot developer OpenAI has announced several improvements to ChatGPT Search and has started rolling them out.

For starters, OpenAI says it’s adding shopping to ChatGPT Search so users can find, compare, and buy products with ChatGPT.

For example, users can ask OpenAI’s chatbot to find the best espresso machine within a specific price range, and it will offer a selection of products that meet this condition. Like Google Shopping, it will show several espresso machines you can choose from.

Adam Fry, the ChatGPT Search Product Lead at OpenAI, tells Wired that the results are chosen independently and aren’t sponsored ads paid for by advertisers. Instead, ChatGPT Search Shopping will be “more personalized and conversational” rather than keyword-focused.

“It's trying to understand how people are reviewing this, how people are talking about this, what the pros and cons are,” Fry says, adding that users can prioritize reviews when curating a list of recommended products.

ChatGPT Search Shopping is being rolled out as we speak to Plus, Pro, and Free users. It may take a few days to complete the rollout, so don't worry if you can't use it right away.

OpenAI added several other improvements to ChatGPT Search. For example, users can now send a WhatsApp message to 1-800-242-8478 or 1-800-ChatGPT to get up-to-date answers and live sports scores.

In addition, ChatGPT now includes multiple citations for a given response, allowing users to learn more or verify information across multiple sources on the internet.

Lastly, users can now search faster with trending searches and autocomplete suggestions in ChatGPT Search.

Recently, OpenAI announced that its deep research functionality is available to all ChatGPT users. The company is currently testing a watermarking feature in GPT-4o that indicates what images are created with OpenAI’s image generator.

Finally, earlier this month, OpenAI introduced three new large language models (LLMs) for the developer community: GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and GPT-4.1 nano.