OpenAI launches ChatGPT shopping assistant to scour web for best match and deal

OpenAI has rolled out an upgraded version of its ChatGPT shopping assistant, adding research capabilities designed to offer users more detailed and personalised product suggestions. The update arrives in time for the approaching Black Friday sale, one of the year’s biggest retail events, and aims to expand the tool’s ability to search for well-matched products and refine recommendations through conversation.

The company said the enhanced feature not only searches for top product matches but now goes further by asking targeted questions to understand what users truly want. It also draws on ChatGPT’s Memory feature, allowing the system to consider past interactions and personalise suggestions much like a personal shopper would. According to OpenAI, the tool will pull accurate and up-to-date details from high-quality review and quality sources to support more informed decisions.

A more intuitive and conversational shopping experience

OpenAI explained that the new shopping research function is designed for deeper decision-making, turning product discovery into an interactive conversation. Users can issue a prompt for product recommendations and the tool will search the web more extensively than before, returning options that match their preferences while asking follow-up questions to narrow the results.

The company noted the clear distinction between this new research tool and the shopping feature released earlier this year. The earlier version served as a basic shopping assistant, while the latest release positions ChatGPT as a personal shopper capable of handling detail-heavy categories such as electronics, beauty, home and garden, kitchen appliances, and sports and outdoors.

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Rollout across all ChatGPT plans

The upgraded shopping research feature is now being introduced on both mobile and web versions of ChatGPT. It is available for free across account types including Free, Go, Plus and Pro. OpenAI said it intends to offer “nearly unlimited” access to the research tool across all plans during the holiday period.

OpenAI added that the enhancement was launched at the end of November to coincide with the Black Friday sale, providing users with more powerful tools to compare, evaluate and select products during the busiest shopping season of the year.