The San Francisco start-up announces the arrival of a native shopping experience in its conversational chatbot as well as several features to cut deales in Google.
Openai continues to have one step ahead of the competition as on observers. The company of Sam Altman surprises more than one by announcing this April 28 a new feature of its chatbot Chatgpt: making purchases directly from the interface. And if Openai speaks of a “better shopping experience”, it is actually a small revolution.
Concretely, Chatgpt not only proposes to search and compare items between them but also to buy directly from the cat. “Buy” links to merchants are highlighted in a space to the right of the screen which is reminiscent of the aesthetics of Google results pages … The comparison tool allows you to display the various visuals, prices, reviews and options of articles directly in Chatgpt. This new e-commerce experience will gradually be deployed to all products but for the launch only the articles of the fashion, beauty, house and electronic categories are available. The native buying experience will be available in a few days for all Chatgpt accounts (more, pro, free, etc.) in all countries where Chatgpt is deployed (and it is quite rare to note it).
OPENAI claims that the results of product research are classified independently and not sponsored. For the moment in any case. The purchasing experience must evolve quickly in the coming months over the return of users.
Personalized research arrives, except in Europe
Openai does not stop there in the news. The company also announces the arrival of a personalized research and shopping experience, that is to say that Chatgpt will take in context all past conversations to remember personal preferences of the user and suggest personalized responses or products. The functionality should arrive in the coming weeks and will be deactivable (if necessary) in the parameters of the Chatgpt account. But this time, only the accounts more and pro outside the European Economic Area (EU, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein), from Switzerland and the United Kingdom will be able to access it.
Web search in WhatsApp
Finally, Openai also announces the arrival of web search in WhatsApp. If Chatgpt was already available in the Meta application, it was not possible not to use it as a search engine with recent information. The update changes this parameter. The target? Most certainly an older audience less customary for AI chatbots.
Multi-source research
The San Francisco start-up takes the opportunity to announce the arrival of an update of native research in Chatgpt. The AI will now use several sources for each advanced information in the conversation during research. The goal? Cross information on several different sources. A new interface will also make its appearance to highlight each source, as in Perplexity. Finally, Openai announces that it has deployed research suggestions (like Google, etc.).
By integrating a native shopping experience, Openai pursues an ambitious expansion and monetization strategy. The objective is twofold: significantly increase the user retention rate by keeping them on its platform and conquer a wider audience, capable of using its search engine daily, before undoubtedly monetizing it, as did Google in the past. What will be Sam Altman’s next step ahead. The announcement by Nick Turley, product manager at Openai, of an interest in the acquisition of Google Chrome in any case gives certain clues to the followed direction.
