OpenAI has supercharged ChatGPT with new shopping features, intensifying its rivalry with Google in the online search and retail space. Launched on April 28, 2025, the update allows users to find, compare, and shop for products directly within ChatGPT’s conversational interface, covering categories like fashion, beauty, home goods, and electronics.
Users can now ask natural language questions such as “What’s a good hair dryer under ₹5,000?” and receive tailored recommendations complete with product images, user reviews, pricing comparisons, and direct links to merchant websites for purchase. This seamless shopping experience is available to all ChatGPT users – Free, Plus, Pro, and even those without accounts-across mobile and web platforms globally.
Unlike traditional search engines that often prioritize paid ads, OpenAI insists these shopping results are independently generated by AI using structured third-party data, without affiliate commissions or sponsored listings. This approach aims to provide more authentic, personalized product guidance, with future updates planned to integrate ChatGPT’s memory feature, enabling it to recall user preferences for even more customized suggestions (though privacy rules restrict this in some regions).
The new shopping functionality blurs the line between AI chatbots and search engines, signaling OpenAI’s ambition to disrupt Google’s long-held dominance in search and e-commerce. Google has responded by embedding its Gemini AI assistant into search results, but OpenAI’s rapid growth-handling over a billion web searches weekly-shows strong user engagement and appetite for AI-driven shopping. Additional improvements include trending search suggestions and autocomplete features similar to Google Search, plus integration of ChatGPT search into WhatsApp, allowing users to get product recommendations and web search answers directly within chats.
With this bold move, OpenAI is not just enhancing ChatGPT’s capabilities but reshaping how consumers discover and buy products online-making AI-powered shopping mainstream and challenging Google on its home turf.