ChatGPT Launches Online Shopping Feature, Escalating Competition with Google
OpenAI has unveiled a new shopping feature in ChatGPT, enabling users to search for products through natural conversation. This move significantly strengthens OpenAI’s position as a growing rival to Google.
The update was announced on Monday, the update lets users find and compare products like fashion, beauty items, and home electronics directly within ChatGPT. Instead of browsing through traditional search results, users can now engage in a conversational shopping experience, ask follow-up questions, and get personalized recommendations pulled from the web—not ads, according to OpenAI.
“Search has become one of our most popular and fastest-growing features, with over a billion web searches in just the past week,” OpenAI shared in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
Once a user finds what they’re looking for, ChatGPT also facilitates direct connections to merchants for purchases, making the experience more seamless.
This feature rollout signals OpenAI’s growing ambition to challenge Google’s long-standing dominance in search, especially as the tech giant faces heightened antitrust scrutiny in the U.S. Google, in turn, has been integrating its Gemini AI assistant into search results, offering AI-generated summaries above traditional website links.
Tensions between the companies escalated recently when an OpenAI executive testified in an antitrust hearing that the company would consider acquiring Google’s Chrome browser if it were forced to sell it.
OpenAI’s new approach blurs the boundary between AI chatbots and traditional search engines, marking a major step in reshaping how people find and buy products online.
