ChatGPT / Depositphotos
OpenAI allowed users to make purchases directly in ChatGPT — and now it looks even less like a regular chatbot.
This is the company’s new step towards turning the chatbot into a universal tool — with search, voice commands, determining the coordinates, «thoughts with pictures» and now shopping. So far, the feature works for several product categories: electronics, fashion, beauty, and household goods. But the list will expand over time.
The feature is already available to all 500 million active ChatGPT users. Moreover, you don’t even need to be logged into your account. Shopping is simple: the bot helps you compare products and then provides a link to an external website where you can complete the purchase. OpenAI clarifies that it does not earn money from these purchases — the company does not have affiliate kickbacks or advertising.
This is one of several updates that OpenAI rolled out on Monday. Sam Altman clearly has a strategy: to keep users in ChatGPT as long as possible and at the same time keep up with the competition — Google, Anthropic, Elon Musk’s xAI, and Perplexity.
The shopping feature now puts ChatGPT in direct competition not only with search engines, but also with recommendation platforms such as Wirecutter (New York Times) and CNET. All of this looks like a clear course to make a chatbot an entry point to everything from information to shopping. In addition the company was thinking about its own social network.
According to OpenAI, search is one of the most popular and fastest growing features of ChatGPT. Last week, users performed more than a billion web searches using the bot. At the same time, we recently reported how new ChatGPT models leave extra characters in the text. And among Altman’s plans are to release model with open scalesNo matter how strange it may sound at first glance.
Source: Bloomberg