OpenAI has announced that users will be able to purchase products via ChatGPT in the near future. Shopping buttons will be available to all users, regardless of whether they have signed in or not. Shoppers won’t be able check out within ChatGPT, but will instead be redirected to a merchant’s site to complete the transaction.
Adam Fry, ChatGPT’s search product lead, demonstrated in a WIRED prelaunch demonstration how the updated user interface could be used to assist people who are using the tool to research products decide which espresso machine or chair to purchase. The product recommendations that are shown to potential shoppers are based both on what ChatGPT knows about the user’s preferences and product reviews gathered from the web.
Fry claims that ChatGPT users already conduct over a billion searches each week and use the tool to research products in a variety of categories, including beauty, home goods and electronics. The ChatGPT results for WIRED’s widely read and tested buying guide on best office chairs included a link to the reporting of our team in the sources tab. (The editorial team is independent, even though Conde Nast, WIRED parent company, signed an agreement with OpenAI last year to allow the company to surface our content.
Searching espresso machines within ChatGPT.
Image Courtesy of OpenAI.
ChatGPT’s new shopping experience is similar to that of OpenAI. Google ShoppingWhen you click on an image of a budget-friendly office chair, multiple retailers like Amazon and Walmart are listed on the right of the screen with buttons to complete the purchase. For now, there is one major difference when shopping on ChatGPT and Google: the results you see are not paid placements but organic results. Fry says that the results are not ads. “They aren’t sponsored.”
Although some product recommendations appear in Google Shopping because retailers paid to have them there, this is just one of the mechanisms Google uses to determine which products to list when searching for Shopping. Websites that post product reviews are constantly changing the content of their recommendations to convince Google’s opaque algorithm that they have high-quality reviews that have been thoroughly reviewed by humans. Google will give higher rankings to reviews that are more carefully considered in its search results. Landing one of the top positions in a Google Search can lead to users buying more products through the website. This could earn the publisher millions in affiliate revenue. How does ChatGPT select which products to recommend
? Why was it that the espresso machines and office chairs listed first when the user typed in the prompt?
Fry says, “It is not looking for specific signals in an algorithm.” According to Fry, this will result in a more personalized and conversational shopping experience, as opposed to a keyword-focused one. “It is trying to understand what people are saying about it, how they are discussing it, and what the pros are,” says Fry. ChatGPT is able to store information about your preferences, such as only buying black clothing from a certain retailer. The next time you want advice on what shirt to purchase, it will give you recommendations that match your preferences.
ChatGPT will feature reviews of products from a variety of online sources. These include editorial publishers such as WIRED and user-generated forums such as Reddit. Fry says users can tell ChatGPT what types of reviews they want to prioritize when curating the list of recommended products.
With this new release, one of the most pressing concerns for online publishers is how affiliate revenue will be handled in this situation. If you decide to buy an office chair after reading WIRED’s review, we will receive a portion of the revenue. This helps support our journalism. How will affiliate revenue function within ChatGPT shopping if the tool recommends a chair that OpenAI knows to be a good choice because, among other places, WIRED gave it a positive review?
Fry says, “We will be experimenting with many different ways this can work.” He did not share any specific plans but said that OpenAI’s priority is to provide high-quality recommendations. The company may also experiment with different affiliate revenue models.
Asked if this could be a significant revenue driver over the long-term, Fry said that OpenAI was focusing on the user experience and would iterate on ChatGPT Shopping as the startup learned more after the release. According to The InformationOpenAI is aiming for big revenue goals. The company expects $125 billion of revenue by 2029. OpenAI generated just under $4 billion last year. It’s not clear how much revenue from affiliates will contribute to the company reaching its goal. In a recent interview with Stratechery newsletter author Ben Thompson CEO Sam Altman floated a notion that affiliate fees could contribute to the company’s revenues.
It is not the first release of shopping-related features from OpenAI for 2025. Operator, its AI agent, can control web browsers to click around and help users buy groceries – or even assist with vacation booking. However, my initial impressions were that the feature was clunky. Perplexity, a competitor of OpenAI in AI-powered searcheslaunched “Buy with Pro”allowing users to shop directly within the app. Google Shopping tabs now include a section called “Researched with AI”which summarizes online reviews and recommends products.
