logo
OpenAI Adds Shopping to ChatGPT in a Challenge to Google

OpenAI Adds Shopping to ChatGPT in a Challenge to Google

WIRED28-04-2025

OpenAI is launching a shopping experience inside of ChatGPT, complete with product picks and buy buttons. WIRED spoke with Adam Fry, the company's search product lead, to ask how it all works. Photo-Illustration:OpenAI announced today that users will soon be able to buy products through ChatGPT. The rollout of shopping buttons for AI-powered search queries will come to everyone, whether they are a signed-in user or not. Shoppers will not be able to check out inside of ChatGPT; instead they will be redirected to the merchant's website to finish the transaction.
In a prelaunch demo for WIRED, Adam Fry, the ChatGPT search product lead at OpenAI, demonstrated how the updated user experience could be used to help people using the tool for product research decide which espresso machine or office chair to buy. The product recommendations shown to prospective shoppers are based on what ChatGPT remembers about a user's preferences as well as product reviews pulled from across the web.
Fry says ChatGPT users are already running over a billion web searches per week, and that people are using the tool to research a wide breadth of shopping categories, like beauty, home goods, and electronics. The product results in ChatGPT for best office chairs, one of WIRED's rigorously tested and widely read buying guides, included a link to our reporting in the sources tab. (Although the business side of Conde Nast, WIRED's parent company, signed a licensing deal last year with OpenAI so the company can surface our content, the editorial team retains independence in how we cover the startup.)
Searching for espresso machines inside ChatGPT. Image Courtesy of OpenAI
The new user experience of buying stuff inside of ChatGPT shares many similarities to Google Shopping. In the interfaces of both, when you click on the image of a budget office chair that tickles your fancy, multiple retailers, like Amazon and Walmart, are listed on the right side of the screen, with buttons for completing the purchase. There is one major difference between shopping through ChatGPT versus Google, for now: the results you see in OpenAI searches are not paid placements, but organic results. 'They are not ads,' says Fry. 'They are not sponsored.'
While some product recommendations that appear inside of Google Shopping show up because retailers paid for them to be there, that's just one mechanism Google uses to decide which products to list in Shopping searches. Websites that publish product reviews are constantly tweaking the content of their buying recommendations in an effort to convince the opaque Google algorithm that the website includes high quality reviews of products that have been thoroughly tested by real humans. Google favors those more considered reviews in search results and will rank them highly when a user is researching a product. To land one of the top spots in a Google search can lead to more of those users buying the product through the website, potentially earning the publisher millions of dollars in affiliate revenue.
So, how does ChatGPT choose which products to recommend? Why were those specific espresso machines and office chairs listed first when the user typed the prompt?
'It's not looking for specific signals that are in some algorithm,' says Fry. According to him, this will be a shopping experience that's more personalized and conversational, rather than keyword-focused. 'It's trying to understand how people are reviewing this, how people are talking about this, what the pros and cons are,' says Fry. If you say that you prefer only buying black clothes from a specific retailer, then ChatGPT will supposedly store that information in its memory the next time you ask for advice about what shirt to buy, giving you recommendations that align with your tastes.
The reviews that ChatGPT features for products will pull from a blend of online sources, including editorial publishers like WIRED as well as user-generated forums like Reddit. Fry says that users can tell ChatGPT which types of reviews to prioritize when curating a list of recommended products.
One of the most pressing questions for online publishers with this new release is likely how affiliate revenue will work in this situation. Currently, if you read WIRED's review of the best office chairs and decide to purchase one through our link, we get a cut of the revenue and it supports our journalism. How will affiliate revenue work inside of ChatGPT shopping when the tool recommends an office chair that OpenAI knows is a good pick because WIRED, among others, gave it a good review?
'We are going to be experimenting with a whole bunch of different ways that this can work,' says Fry. He didn't share specific plans, saying that providing high quality recommendations is OpenAI's first priority right now, and that the company might try different affiliate revenue models in the future.
When asked if he sees this as potentially a meaningful revenue drive in the long-term, Fry similarly says that OpenAI is just focused on the user experience first and will iterate on ChatGPT shopping as the startup learns more post-release. OpenAI has big revenue goals; according to reporting from The Information, the company expects to bring in $125 billion in revenue by 2029. Last year, OpenAI had just under $4 billion in revenue. It's unclear how big of part the company expects affiliate revenue to play in reaching that goal. CEO Sam Altman floated the idea of affiliate fees adding to the company's revenue, in a recent interview with Stratechery newsletter writer Ben Thomspon.
This is not the first shopping adjacent release from OpenAI in 2025. Its AI agent, called Operator, can take control of web browsers and click around, potentially helping users buy groceries or assist with vacation booking, though my initial impressions found the feature to be fairly clunky at release. Perplexity, one of OpenAI's competitors in AI-powered search, launched 'Buy with Pro' late last year, where users could also shop directly inside of the app. Additionally, the Google Shopping tab currently includes a 'Researched with AI' section for some queries, with summaries of online reviews as well as recommended picks.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Study finds little agreement between Republicans and Democrats on media sources they trust
Study finds little agreement between Republicans and Democrats on media sources they trust

Boston Globe

time27 minutes ago

  • Boston Globe

Study finds little agreement between Republicans and Democrats on media sources they trust

Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up ENTERTAINMENT Advertisement Disney to pay almost $439 million to take full control of streaming service Hulu Hulu began in 2007 and quickly evolved into as a service backed by entertainment conglomerates who hoped to stave off the internet with an online platform for their own TV shows. Gabby Jones/Bloomberg Disney will pay Comcast's NBCUniversal nearly $439 million for its stake in Hulu, taking full control of the streaming service. The move closes out an appraisal process that's dragged on for a few years. Disney said in November 2023 that it was acquiring a 33 percent stake in Hulu from Comcast for at least $8.6 billion. That amount reflected Hulu's guaranteed floor value of $27.5 billion, according to a regulatory filing. Disney has run Hulu since 2019, when Comcast ceded its authority to Disney and effectively became a silent partner. Hulu began in 2007 and quickly evolved into as a service backed by entertainment conglomerates who hoped to stave off the internet with an online platform for their own TV shows. Disney joined in 2009, planning to offer shows from ABC, ESPN, and the Disney Channel. A decade later, Disney gained majority control of the business when it acquired 21st Century Fox. — ASSOCIATED PRESS Advertisement ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Meta is creating a new AI lab to pursue 'superintelligence' Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. David Paul Morris/Bloomberg Meta is preparing to unveil a new artificial intelligence research lab dedicated to pursuing 'superintelligence,' a hypothetical AI system that exceeds the powers of the human brain, as the tech giant jockeys to stay competitive in the technology race, according to four people with knowledge of the company's plans. Meta has tapped Alexandr Wang, 28, the founder and CEO of AI startup Scale AI, to join the new lab, the people said, and has been in talks to invest billions of dollars in his company as part of a deal that would also bring other Scale AI employees to the company. Meta has offered seven- to nine-figure compensation packages to dozens of researchers from leading AI companies such as OpenAI and Google, with some agreeing to join, according to the people. The new lab is part of a larger reorganization of Meta's AI efforts, the people said. The company, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has recently grappled with internal management struggles over the technology, as well as employee churn and several product releases that fell flat, two of the people said. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's CEO, has invested billions of dollars into turning his company into an AI powerhouse. Since OpenAI released the ChatGPT chatbot in 2022, the tech industry has raced to build increasingly powerful AI. Zuckerberg has pushed his company to incorporate AI across its products, including in its smart glasses and a recently released app, Meta AI. — NEW YORK TIMES Advertisement REAL ESTATE Judge refuses to block NYC broker-fee law starting June 11 Tenants in New York City have long been forced to pay costs incurred by landlords to hire the brokers who list their properties, which can add thousands of dollars to housing costs. Katherine Marks/The New York Times A federal judge refused to block a New York City law that would require landlords — rather than their tenants — to pay fees for hiring listing brokers, clearing the way for the measure to take effect on Wednesday. US District Judge Ronnie Abrams on Tuesday denied a request by the Real Estate Board of New York, the New York State Association of Realtors and others for a court order halting the new measure while their lawsuit proceeds. The ruling is another setback for the real estate industry's legal fight against the measure and allows the city to begin enforcing it starting Wednesday. The City Council adopted the measure in November to end the longstanding practice of tenants being forced to pay costs incurred by landlords to hire the brokers who list their properties, which can add thousands of dollars to housing costs. The real estate industry argued the new law branded brokers as villains and would force landlords to raise rents to cover the costs of hiring them. In her ruling, Abrams said the city 'made it clear that it sought to address a specific harm: the detrimental impact on housing mobility caused by the practice of imposing brokers' fees on tenants.' She also dismissed most of their claims that the law violated their constitutional rights. — BLOOMBERG NEWS Advertisement GENETICS 23andMe customers did not expect their DNA data would be sold, lawsuit claims A 23andMe DNA kit. Tiffany Hagler-Geard/Bloomberg Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia have sued the genetic-testing company 23andMe to oppose the sale of DNA data from its customers without their direct consent. The suit, filed Monday in US Bankruptcy Court in the Eastern District of Missouri, argues that 23andMe needs to have permission from each and every customer before their data is potentially sold. The company had entered an agreement to sell itself and its assets in bankruptcy court. The information for sale 'comprises an unprecedented compilation of highly sensitive and immutable personal data of consumers,' according to the lawsuit. 'This isn't just data — it's your DNA. It's personal, permanent and deeply private,' Dan Rayfield, the Oregon attorney general, said in a statement. 'People did not submit their personal data to 23andMe thinking their genetic blueprint would later be sold off to the highest bidder.' The DNA company, which at one point in 2021 was valued at $6 billion, ran into financial trouble and filed for bankruptcy in March, with its CEO, Anne Wojcicki, resigning shortly afterward. It is poised to be acquired by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals for $256 million, according to the lawsuit. Regeneron is a biotechnology company that uses genetic data to develop new drugs. A backup bidder for the auction is TTAM Research Institute, a California nonprofit, the lawsuit says. The company was founded by Wojcicki. — NEW YORK TIMES LABOR Video game performers on strike for almost a year over AI issues reach a tentative deal SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of its headquarters in Los Angeles. Richard Vogel/Associated Press The union for Hollywood's video game performers has reached a tentative contract with several video game companies that may bring an end to an almost year-long strike tied to the use of artificial intelligence. Members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists went on strike in July 2024 after negotiations with game industry giants came to a halt over artificial intelligence protections. SAG-AFTRA said that the unregulated use of AI posed 'an equal or even greater threat' to performers in the video game industry than it does in film and television because the capacity to cheaply and easily create convincing digital replicas of performers' voices is widely available. The performers were worried that unchecked use of AI could provide game makers with a means to displace them — by training an AI to replicate an actor's voice or to create a digital replica of their likeness without consent. SAG-AFTRA said that it anticipates that the terms of a strike suspension agreement will be finalized with the companies soon. Union members will remain on strike until such an agreement is reached. The tentative contract deal still needs approval by the National Board and ratification by union membership. — ASSOCIATED PRESS Advertisement

FDA looks to AI to enhance efficiency
FDA looks to AI to enhance efficiency

Boston Globe

time37 minutes ago

  • Boston Globe

FDA looks to AI to enhance efficiency

Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The agency plays a central role in pursuing the agenda of the US health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and it has already begun to press food makers to eliminate artificial food dyes. The new road map also underscores the Trump administration's efforts to smooth the way for major industries with an array of efforts aimed at getting products to pharmacies and store shelves quickly. Advertisement Some aspects of the proposals outlined in JAMA were met with skepticism, particularly the idea that AI is up to the task of shearing months or years from the painstaking work of examining applications that companies submit when seeking approval for a drug or high-risk medical device. Advertisement 'I don't want to be dismissive of speeding reviews at the FDA,' said Stephen Holland, a lawyer who formerly advised the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on health care. 'I think that there is great potential here, but I'm not seeing the beef yet.' A major AI rollout closely follows the release of a report by Kennedy's MAHA Commission, which uses an acronym for Make America Healthy Again, that was found to be rife with references to scientific research apparently fabricated by an AI program. For some cases, the FDA officials proposed speeding major drug approvals by requiring only one major study in patients rather than two, a practice the agency has used in recent years. The pandemic provided a precedent, they said, for accelerating the process. 'We believe this is clear demonstration that rapid or instant reviews are possible,' Makary and Prasad wrote. But Holland pointed out that during the pandemic, many staff members were transferred from routine duties, including overseas inspections of food or drug facilities, and reassigned to hasten critical COVID product reviews. The agency was also better staffed. In recent months, the FDA shed about 1,940 employees, reducing the workforce to 8,000 from roughly 10,000. Last week, the agency introduced Elsa, an AI large-language model similar to ChatGPT. The FDA said it could be used to prioritize which food or drug facilities to inspect, to describe side effects in drug safety summaries and to perform other basic product-review tasks. The FDA officials wrote that AI held the promise to 'radically increase efficiency' in examining as many as 500,000 pages submitted for approval decisions. Advertisement Current and former health officials said the AI tool was helpful but far from transformative. For one, the model limits the number of characters that can be reviewed, meaning it is unable to do some rote data analysis tasks. Its results must be checked carefully, so far saving little time. Staff members said the model was hallucinating, or producing false information. Employees can ask the Elsa model to summarize text or act as an expert in a particular field of medicine. Makary said the AI models were not being trained by data submitted by the drug or medical device industry. When it comes to food oversight, Makary and Prasad said there would be a renewed focus on 'our increasingly chemically manipulated diet,' a goal embraced by Republicans and Democrats. 'For all additives,' the article said, 'the benefit-to-harm balance must be reevaluated.' Although the Trump administration is seeking steep cuts in the FDA's budget for the next fiscal year, the food division is expected to receive additional funds. Others noted the fine line agency officials were walking, given Kennedy's complaints that the FDA is too close to the drug industry and the Trump administration's business-friendly approach. Makary and Prasad wrote that the FDA must be 'partners with industry' while avoiding 'a cozy relationship that has characterized the agency in the past.' Dr. Reshma Ramachandran, a director of the Yale Collaboration for Regulatory Rigor, Integrity and Transparency, pointed out that Makary and Prasad were going on a six-city, closed-door listening tour to meet with chief executives of the drug industry. 'How is this guarding the agency 'against a cozy relationship' with industry?' she asked. The FDA priorities 'read as though they're straight out of PhRMA's playbook,' she said, referring to the trade group. Advertisement This article originally appeared in

Apple Intelligence: Everything you need to know about Apple's AI model and services
Apple Intelligence: Everything you need to know about Apple's AI model and services

TechCrunch

time43 minutes ago

  • TechCrunch

Apple Intelligence: Everything you need to know about Apple's AI model and services

If you've upgraded to a newer iPhone model recently, you've probably noticed that Apple Intelligence is showing up in some of your most-used apps, like Messages, Mail, and Notes. Apple Intelligence (yes, also abbreviated to AI) showed up in Apple's ecosystem in October 2024, and it's here to stay as Apple competes with Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and others to build the best AI tools. What is Apple Intelligence? Image Credits:Apple Cupertino marketing executives have branded Apple Intelligence: 'AI for the rest of us.' The platform is designed to leverage the things that generative AI already does well, like text and image generation, to improve upon existing features. Like other platforms including ChatGPT and Google Gemini, Apple Intelligence was trained on large information models. These systems use deep learning to form connections, whether it be text, images, video or music. The text offering, powered by LLM, presents itself as Writing Tools. The feature is available across various Apple apps, including Mail, Messages, Pages and Notifications. It can be used to provide summaries of long text, proofread and even write messages for you, using content and tone prompts. Image generation has been integrated as well, in similar fashion — albeit a bit less seamlessly. Users can prompt Apple Intelligence to generate custom emojis (Genmojis) in an Apple house style. Image Playground, meanwhile, is a standalone image generation app that utilizes prompts to create visual content than can be used in Messages, Keynote or shared via social media. Apple Intelligence also marks a long-awaited face-lift for Siri. The smart assistant was early to the game, but has mostly been neglected for the past several years. Siri is integrated much more deeply into Apple's operating systems; for instance, instead of the familiar icon, users will see a glowing light around the edge of their iPhone screen when it's doing its thing. More important, new Siri works across apps. That means, for example, that you can ask Siri to edit a photo and then insert it directly into a text message. It's a frictionless experience the assistant had previously lacked. Onscreen awareness means Siri uses the context of the content you're currently engaged with to provide an appropriate answer. Leading up to WWDC 2025, many expected that Apple would introduce us to an even more souped-up version of Siri, but we're going to have to wait a bit longer. Techcrunch event Save $200+ on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Save $200+ on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Boston, MA | REGISTER NOW 'As we've shared, we're continuing our work to deliver the features that make Siri even more personal,' said Apple SVP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi at WWDC 2025. 'This work needed more time to reach our high-quality bar, and we look forward to sharing more about it in the coming year.' This yet-to-be-released, more personalized version of Siri is supposed to be able to understand 'personal context,' like your relationships, communications routine, and more. But according to a Bloomberg report, the in-development version of this new Siri is too error-ridden to ship, hence its delay. At WWDC 2025, Apple also unveiled a new AI feature called Visual Intelligence, which helps you do an image search for things you see as you browse. Apple also unveiled a Live Translation feature that can translate conversations in real time in the Messages, FaceTime, and Phone apps. Visual Intelligence and Live Translation are expected to be available later in 2025, when iOS 26 launches to the public. When was Apple Intelligence unveiled? After months of speculation, Apple Intelligence took center stage at WWDC 2024. The platform was announced in the wake of a torrent of generative AI news from companies like Google and Open AI, causing concern that the famously tight-lipped tech giant had missed the boat on the latest tech craze. Contrary to such speculation, however, Apple had a team in place, working on what proved to be a very Apple approach to artificial intelligence. There was still pizzazz amid the demos — Apple always loves to put on a show — but Apple Intelligence is ultimately a very pragmatic take on the category. Apple Intelligence isn't a standalone feature. Rather, it's about integrating into existing offerings. While it is a branding exercise in a very real sense, the large language model (LLM) driven technology will operate behind the scenes. As far as the consumer is concerned, the technology will mostly present itself in the form of new features for existing apps. We learned more during the Apple's iPhone 16 event in September 2024. During the event, Apple touted a number of AI-powered features coming to its devices, from translation on the Apple Watch Series 10, visual search on iPhones, and a number of tweaks to Siri's capabilities. The first wave of Apple Intelligence is arriving at the end of October, as part of iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1 and macOS Sequoia 15.1. The features launched first in U.S. English. Apple later added Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, South African, and U.K. English localizations. Support for Chinese, English (India), English (Singapore), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Vietnamese will arrive in 2025. Who gets Apple Intelligence? Image Credits:Darrell Etherington The first wave of Apple Intelligence arrived in October 2024 va iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18., and macOS Sequoia 15.1 updates. These updates included integrated writing tools, image cleanup, article summaries, and a typing input for the redesigned Siri experience. A second wave of features became available as part of iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2 and macOS Sequoia 15.2. That list includes, Genmoji, Image Playground, Visual Intelligence, Image Wand, and ChatGPT integration. These offerings are free to use, so long as you have one of the following pieces of hardware: All iPhone 16 models iPhone 15 Pro Max (A17 Pro) iPhone 15 Pro (A17 Pro) iPad Pro (M1 and later) iPad Air (M1 and later) iPad mini (A17 or later) MacBook Air (M1 and later) MacBook Pro (M1 and later) iMac (M1 and later) Mac mini (M1 and later) Mac Studio (M1 Max and later) Mac Pro (M2 Ultra) Notably, only the Pro versions of the iPhone 15 are getting access, owing to shortcomings on the standard model's chipset. Presumably, however, the whole iPhone 16 line will be able to run Apple Intelligence when it arrives. How does Apple's AI work without an internet connection? Image Credits:Apple When you ask GPT or Gemini a question, your query is being sent to external servers to generate a response, which requires an internet connection. But Apple has taken a small-model, bespoke approach to training. The biggest benefit of this approach is that many of these tasks become far less resource intensive and can be performed on-device. This is because, rather than relying on the kind of kitchen sink approach that fuels platforms like GPT and Gemini, the company has compiled datasets in-house for specific tasks like, say, composing an email. That doesn't apply to everything, however. More complex queries will utilize the new Private Cloud Compute offering. The company now operates remote servers running on Apple Silicon, which it claims allows it to offer the same level of privacy as its consumer devices. Whether an action is being performed locally or via the cloud will be invisible to the user, unless their device is offline, at which point remote queries will toss up an error. Apple Intelligence with third-party apps Image Credits:Didem Mente/Anadolu Agency / Getty Images A lot of noise was made about Apple's pending partnership with OpenAI ahead of the launch of Apple Intelligence. Ultimately, however, it turned out that the deal was less about powering Apple Intelligence and more about offering an alternative platform for those things it's not really built for. It's a tacit acknowledgement that building a small-model system has its limitation. Apple Intelligence is free. So, too, is access to ChatGPT. However, those with paid accounts to the latter will have access to premium features free users don't, including unlimited queries. ChatGPT integration, which debuts on iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2, has two primary roles: supplementing Siri's knowledge base and adding to the existing Writing Tools options. With the service enabled, certain questions will prompt the new Siri to ask the user to approve its accessing ChatGPT. Recipes and travel planning are examples of questions that may surface the option. Users can also directly prompt Siri to 'ask ChatGPT.' Compose is the other primary ChatGPT feature available through Apple Intelligence. Users can access it in any app that supports the new Writing Tools feature. Compose adds the ability to write content based on a prompt. That joins existing writing tools like Style and Summary. We know for sure that Apple plans to partner with additional generative AI services. The company all but said that Google Gemini is next on that list. Can developers build on Apple's AI models? At WWDC 2025, Apple announced what it calls the Foundation Models framework, which will let developers tap into its AI models while offline. This makes it more possible for developers to build AI features into their third-party apps that leverage Apple's existing systems. 'For example, if you're getting ready for an exam, an app like Kahoot can create a personalized quiz from your notes to make studying more engaging,' Federighi said at WWDC. 'And because it happens using on-device models, this happens without cloud API costs […] We couldn't be more excited about how developers can build on Apple intelligence to bring you new experiences that are smart, available when you're offline, and that protect your privacy.'

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store