OpenAI launched shopping research in ChatGPT just before Black Friday 2025, creating a new AI-powered channel for holiday shopping. ChatGPT users can now access personalized buyer’s guides that do the heavy lifting of product research, comparison, and recommendation.
Prepare your products ChatGPT to find them and boost your bottom line before the new year.
What ChatGPT’s Shopping Tool Brings to Retail
ChatGPT’s shopping tool works by asking clarifying questions, reading trusted sites, citing reliable sources, and synthesizing information from across the web to deliver comprehensive buyer’s guides.
Unlike a regular ChatGPT response, shopping research takes a few minutes to complete because it performs deep analyses of product specifications, reviews, pricing, and availability.
The shopping research feature launched with nearly unlimited usage for all ChatGPT users (including Free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans) through the holiday season. OpenAI successfully positioned ChatGPT as the go-to source for finding products and shopping this holiday season.
Key Shopping Features That Set ChatGPT Apart
ChatGPT’s shopping assistant excels in several areas that make it particularly valuable for consumers:
- Personalized recommendations – The system builds on ChatGPT’s understanding of you from past conversations and your ChatGPT memory to deliver tailored suggestions
- Deep product research – Shopping research powered by a specialized GPT-5 mini variant reaches 52% product accuracy on multi-constraint queries, compared to 37% for standard ChatGPT Search
- Category expertise – The tool performs particularly well in detail-heavy categories like electronics, beauty, home and garden, kitchen and appliances, and sports and outdoor
- Interactive feedback – Users can guide the research by marking products as “Not interested” or “More like this” as options appear, allowing the system to refine results in real time
- Visual product displays – Products appear in a carousel format with images, titles, prices, and AI-generated labels like “Best budget choice” based on user reviews and product details
How the Shopping Research Experience Works
The shopping assistant asks questions about your budget, preferences, and specific requirements before generating recommendations. This conversational approach helps narrow down options and ensures the final buyer’s guide matches your actual needs.
You can trigger shopping research in two ways: ChatGPT will automatically suggest it when you ask shopping-related questions, or you can manually select “shopping research” from the “+” menu.
Once activated, ChatGPT opens a visual interface where you actively guide the research process by providing feedback on product options as they appear.
The system pulls information including price, availability, reviews, specifications, and images from across the internet. For simple shopping questions, ChatGPT delivers quick answers, but for complex product decisions requiring comparison of multiple factors, the tool invests more time to ensure accuracy and thoroughness.
Instant Checkout: Buy Directly Within ChatGPT
OpenAI partnered with PayPal to introduce instant checkout, allowing users to complete purchases without leaving the chat interface. U.S. ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Free users can now buy directly from U.S. Etsy sellers, with over a million Shopify merchants—including Glossier, SKIMS, Spanx, and Vuori—coming soon.
How Instant Checkout Streamlines Purchases
When someone asks a shopping question and ChatGPT displays relevant products, items that support instant checkout feature a “Buy” button. Users can tap this button, confirm their order details, shipping information, and payment method, then complete the purchase entirely within ChatGPT.
Existing ChatGPT subscribers can pay with their card on file or use other card and express payment options provided through PayPal’s payment infrastructure.
PayPal’s integration brings several advantages to the ChatGPT shopping experience:
- Stored payment credentials – PayPal’s network of stored cards and digital wallets enables instant payments without re-entering information
- Venmo support – The partnership includes Venmo, giving peer sellers and small businesses access to ChatGPT-driven purchases
- Encrypted transactions – All purchases use encrypted payment tokens and bank-grade fraud prevention tools
- User control – Shoppers retain the ability to approve or deny purchases, view order history, and revoke permissions at any time
Currently, instant checkout supports single-item purchases, but OpenAI plans to add multi-item carts and expand to more merchants and regions.
This functionality transforms ChatGPT from a research tool into a complete commerce platform where discovery, decision, and purchase happen in one conversational flow.
PREVENT PAYPAL ACCOUNT CLOSURE
Getting Your Products Featured in ChatGPT Shopping Results
Retailers and brands need to optimize their presence to appear in ChatGPT’s shopping recommendations. Product results display organically and remain unsponsored. ChatGPT ranks them purely on relevance to the user. This means traditional advertising approaches won’t work; instead, you must focus on data quality and discoverability.
Steps for ChatGPT Shopping Optimization
To enable your e-store for ChatGPT shopping assistant capabilities, follow these strategic steps:
- Apply to partner programs – Submit your application through OpenAI’s “Buy it in ChatGPT” program to get your product feed listed in the platform
- Make your product feed accessible – Ensure your product feed is available to third-party providers so AI systems can index your inventory
- Enable instant checkout – Integrate with PayPal and supported payment processors to offer seamless purchasing within ChatGPT
- Monitor pricing accuracy – The first merchant listed provides the price data that ChatGPT displays, so verify your pricing remains current
- Sync availability data – Keep stock levels synchronized across all platforms to prevent showing out-of-stock items
Product Data Elements
Focus on these core areas when optimizing your product information:
- Accurate product identifiers – Include GTINs, SKUs, and categories to ensure AI systems correctly identify and surface your products
- Detailed attributes – Fields like size, material, compatibility, and specifications help match user intent with precision
- Conversational keywords – Use phrases that align with natural language queries, such as “lightweight waterproof jacket for hiking” rather than just “jacket”
- Clean and consistent metadata – Use customer-focused language that describes benefits and use cases, not just technical specifications
- High-quality images – Provide clear product photos that showcase items from multiple angles and in use contexts
Product Descriptions for AI
Beyond basic attributes, enriched product descriptions significantly improve your chances of appearing in ChatGPT shopping results. Instead of minimal information, provide detailed context that helps AI systems understand how your product solves customer problems.
For example, rather than listing “Color: Blue,” enhance it to “Color: Navy Blue with White Contrast Stitching”. Similarly, expand “Material: Cotton” to “Material: 100% Organic Egyptian Cotton, Pre-Washed for Softness”. These enrichments give AI tools more context for confirming a feature matches user requirements.
Product titles should incorporate natural language patterns that reflect how people actually search. Consider the questions customers ask and the problems they’re trying to solve. Frame products as solutions to specific needs, using age-specific language, gift-giving scenarios, and recipient-focused descriptions where appropriate.
Prepare for the Future of Online Shopping
ChatGPT’s shopping tool is just the beginning of AI-powered commerce. As the platform expands beyond U.S. users and adds multi-item cart functionality, early adopters who optimize now will beat the competition.
The feature’s availability across all ChatGPT user tiers creates an enormous potential audience for brands that position themselves well.
It’s you start treating ChatGPT as a primary sales channel that requires dedicated optimization, similar to how brands currently approach Amazon, Google Shopping, or social commerce platforms.