OpenAI is making it easier to plan out holiday shopping with ChatGPT’s latest feature called “shopping research.” Any shopping question in ChatGPT will trigger this new feature, which is rolling out to all ChatGPT users on free and paid plans on mobile and web, with “nearly unlimited usage” available during the holiday shopping season.
Now, if you ask ChatGPT for “best TVs in bright lighting,” for example, as the company’s announcement video shows, the response will end with a button asking if you want to do additional research. This is where the “personal shopper” aspect comes in, although the blog post notes that “shopping research might make mistakes about product details like price and availability, and we encourage you to visit the merchant site for the most accurate details.”
Users refine their choices by selecting their preferences during a series of questions that can be filtered based on price, intended use, and desired features, similar to the dropdown menus on most retail websites. The products it pulls up can be purchased on retailers’ websites, but OpenAI said it plans to roll out Instant Checkout, which will allow direct purchasing inside ChatGPT with participating merchants.
OpenAI is not alone in trying to encourage shopping within its products. Google also recently released new AI-powered shopping features in its AI Mode, and the AI agent in Perplexity’s Comet browser will shop on your behalf, much to Amazon’s chagrin. (The trend is something The Verge’s Nilay Patel has termed “The DoorDash problem.”)
According to OpenAI, it’s built on a version of GPT‑5 mini that has been refined for shopping tasks, with product recommendations from “quality sources” on the internet containing “up-to-date information like price, availability, reviews, specs, and images.” They can also take into account previous conversations with ChatGPT and user “memory” if that is turned on, along with buttons to show “more like this” or “not interested” on specific items.
Pro users will see proactively recommended products packaged in “buyer’s guides” based on their past chatlogs with Pulse. “For example, if you’ve been discussing e-bikes, a future Pulse card could suggest useful accessories for you,” OpenAI wrote.
