OpenAI introduces shopping recommendations to ChatGPT search

OpenAIhas introduced a shopping-focused upgrade to its ChatGPT’s web search capabilities. The AI chatbot will now offer product recommendations with visual details, including images, pricing, reviews, and purchase links.

The capability, delivered through the default GPT-4o model, is available globally across all tiers—including Pro, Plus, and Free, and users who access the platform without signing in.

“We're excited to announce we’ve launched several improvements to ChatGPT search, and today we’re starting to roll out a better shopping experience.We’re experimenting with making shopping simpler and faster to find, compare, and buy products in ChatGPT. Improved product results, Visual product details, pricing, and reviews, Direct links to buy. Product results are chosen independently and are not ads,” read the company’s post on X. 

The company noted that search has become one of ChatGPT’s fastest-growing features, with over one billion queries in the past week.

Some of the categories covered at launch include fashion, beauty, home goods, and electronics, with answers recommended to the user’s query—for example, the chatbot can generate personalised results for “laptops under Rs 60,000 for video editing.”

OpenAI says the shopping results draw on structured data (pricing, descriptions, reviews) from third-party sources. It further noted that results are not paid placements, and the company will not earn referral commissions from purchases made through the platform. 

Some of its additional improvements rolling out alongside shopping include in-chat search from WhatsApp, clearer source citations, and a new “trending” panel that brings up popular queries and autocomplete suggestions.

The new launch comes a day after the company planned to roll back its recent GPT-4o update after users raised concerns about the chatbot’s overly pleasing behaviour.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged that the latest updates to GPT-4o had made the AI “too sycophant-y and annoying,” leading to frustration among users.

“The last couple of GPT-4o updates have made the personality too sycophant-y and annoying (even though there are some very good parts of it), and we are working on fixes asap, some today and some this week. At some point will share our learnings from this, it's been interesting,” read his post.