OpenAI, which spends far more money than it takes in, is trying something new to stanch the bleeding. The company just announced that all users, including on the free tier, can shop from ChatGPT Search. "You can now search for a product, compare options and buy products in ChatGPT," OpenAI said in a press release. Categories currently available include fashion, beauty, home goods and electronics, with expansion to more categories set to come later.
The search results you'll obtain are "chosen independently and are not ads," the company promises. The updates are available in 4o and are rolling out to ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Free and even logged-out users. Along with the shopping, OpenAI introduced search in WhatsApp, enabling users to send a WhatsApp message to ChatGPT to get up-to-date answers. Also new are improved citations, trending search and upcoming memory integration.
Trusting ChatGPT for accurate shopping advise may be a risk, as the app tends to (still) make stuff up when it doesn't know an answer. It seems that OpenAI is accessing reviews from Wired and other sites to get information on products, presumably through license agreements. It's not clear how OpenAI is making money on shopping since it's surfacing organic results and not paid placements, but it could be through affiliate revenue.
The company certainly needs the cash. OpenAI only made $4 billion last year, reportedly after spending $9 billion. The company expects to boost that revenue by a factor of 30 to $125 billion by 2029, though it didn't give any specifics on how it plans to do so. As it stands now, OpenAI makes the bulk of its money from paid subscriptions and the rest through licensing its API.
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