ChatGPT’s New ‘Shopping Research’ Compares Products

OpenAI’s ChatGPT will now help users discover, understand and compare products.

This service is provided by the artificial intelligence assistant’s new shopping research experience, the company said in a Monday (Nov. 24) press release.

OpenAI began rolling out shopping research Monday for logged-in ChatGPT users on Free, Go, Plus and Pro Plans, and the company will provide “nearly unlimited usage” to members of these plans throughout the holiday shopping season, according to the release.

Shopping research enables users to describe in conversational language what they are looking for, and it then provides a guide that will help them decide, per the release.

“It asks smart clarifying questions, researches deeply across the internet, reviews quality sources, and builds on ChatGPT’s understanding of you from past conversations and your ChatGPT memory to deliver a personalized buyer’s guide in minutes,” the release said.

While a regular ChatGPT response can quickly answer questions about things such as a price or a particular feature, the new shopping research experience takes a few minutes and provides a more detailed answer that includes comparisons, constraints and tradeoffs, according to the release.

As the shopping research tool suggests options during this process, users can guide its research by providing real-time feedback and telling it whether these options are interesting or not, per the release.

“If you’d like to purchase an item, you can click through to the retailer’s site to do so,” the release said. “In the future, you’ll be able to purchase directly through ChatGPT for merchants who are part of Instant Checkout, where available.”

Shopping research does not share users’ chats with retailers, and it provides organic results based on publicly available websites, according to the release. Merchants can allow shopping research access to their sites by following the company’s allowlisting process.

PYMNTS reported in August that about 32% of consumers said they have used or would use generative AI for shopping. The share of consumers by generation who are using AI for shopping ranges from a low of 28% among baby boomers to a high of 38% among bridge millennials.

AI startup Perplexity said Wednesday (Nov. 19) that it is rolling out a free agentic shopping product for users in the United States. Perplexity’s shopping experience will allow users to do their own research, and then the “agentic part is the seamless purchase right from the answer,” Perplexity Chief Business Officer Dmitry Shevelenko told CNBC.