OpenAI rolls out AI shopping assistant — but how reliable is it?

OpenAI has introduced an innovative shopping assistant feature within ChatGPT, aimed at enhancing the online shopping experience for users. This new tool, announced on Monday, arrives just in time for the holiday shopping surge, with Black Friday approaching rapidly. Available for both free and paid ChatGPT users on web and mobile platforms, this AI assistant generates personalized buying guides in a matter of minutes. The assistant utilizes extensive research capabilities, scouring the internet to compile information from reliable sources. By leveraging ChatGPT’s understanding of users' previous interactions and memory, it crafts tailored recommendations. This launch comes amidst a growing trend, as other AI companies, like Perplexity, are also entering the shopping assistant arena, offering individualized suggestions based on user profiles, including location and occupation. Whether users are searching for the perfect gift for a niece, a reliable bike for daily commutes, or a quiet vacuum cleaner, ChatGPT’s assistant efficiently aggregates the latest product details, such as pricing, availability, and reviews, from public retail websites. The system operates on a specialized version of GPT-5 mini that has been fine-tuned for shopping tasks, ensuring high-quality product research by discerning trusted sites and synthesizing information from various sources. OpenAI emphasizes transparency, assuring users that their chats remain private and are not shared with retailers. The results generated by the assistant are sourced from publicly accessible retail sites, with the tool directly reading product pages and citing its sources while avoiding low-quality or spammy websites to maintain trustworthy recommendations. Despite the advanced capabilities of this shopping assistant, OpenAI warns users that it may still produce errors, particularly regarding product details such as pricing and availability. The company encourages users to verify information by visiting the merchant's website for the most accurate data. Looking ahead, OpenAI plans to enable direct purchases through ChatGPT for merchants that support Instant Checkout, further streamlining the shopping process for users.