ChatGPT becomes your personal shopping assistant this Christmas with its Shopping Research feature

For this Peak Season, OpenAI aims to contribute by making it easier and more efficient for individuals to find the products they need, while also attracting more users—after all, not everything is about holiday charity. To achieve this goal, OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Shopping Research, an experience that conducts research, reviews sources, and leverages the chat memory to create a personalized shopping guide.

This new feature has already begun rolling out on both mobile devices and the web for registered users on the Free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans. Furthermore, OpenAI has announced that it will offer nearly unlimited access for all plans throughout the holiday season, ensuring that everyone can optimize their purchases using ChatGPT Shopping Research.

Additionally, ChatGPT Pulse, the feature available on the Pro plan that provides a curated selection of updates based on your interests each morning, will also be able to display personalized shopping guides.

Introducing shopping research, a new experience in ChatGPT that does the research to help you find the right products.

It’s everything you like about deep research but with an interactive interface to help you make smarter purchasing decisions. pic.twitter.com/jksGVpCXGm

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) November 24, 2025

Advanced Search for Complex Shopping Research

To develop this new feature, OpenAI relied on a version of GPT-5 mini and trained it using reinforcement learning specifically for shopping tasks. “We trained it to read trusted websites, cite reliable sources, and synthesize information from diverse channels in order to generate high-quality product research. In addition, we designed it to be an interactive experience capable of updating and refining its research in real time, incorporating new restrictions and adjusting based on feedback regarding users’ product preferences, which results in responses that feel well-researched and personalized”, explains OpenAI.

The shopping research feature is intended to make it easier to find detailed information about a product, perform comparisons, discover items that fit specific needs, or locate deals. While a simple shopping query could be handled using the standard mode in ChatGPT, this new option creates new opportunities for enriched searches.

“Shopping research is designed for deeper decision-making. It transforms product discovery into a conversation: it poses intelligent questions to understand your interests, extracts accurate and up-to-date information from high-quality sources, and offers options to refine the results. It is especially effective in categories with a high level of detail, such as electronics, beauty, home and garden, kitchen and appliances, and sports and outdoor activities.”

How ChatGPT Shopping Research Works

To start using this feature, you must open the tools menu located in the prompt bar and select the “shopping research” option. You may also submit your inquiry without selecting the tool, and ChatGPT itself will prompt you to use it after analyzing your request.

During the research process, ChatGPT will actively ask you questions to better understand your requirements and preferences (such as budget, for whom the product is intended, which features you value, and so on). You may also continue chatting with the tool to provide your own instructions. In addition, if you have ChatGPT’s memory activated, the AI will refer to it to further personalize the search.

In the background, ChatGPT will search the web for the most up-to-date information (price, availability, reviews, specifications, and images), presenting a range of options in a visual product card format. You will be able to interact with the cards and choose either the “Not interested” or “More like this” options to filter future results. Additionally, by swiping right, you are approving a product, and by swiping left, you will dismiss it—similar to how it works in a dating app. You can also specify the reason a product suggestion did not convince you.

After completing these adjustments, ChatGPT will process for a few moments before providing a personalized shopping guide that summarizes the top products and key information such as differences, advantages, disadvantages, and data on trustworthy retailers.

For now, if you are interested in any of ChatGPT’s suggestions, you must visit the vendor’s website to make your purchase directly. Among OpenAI’s future plans is enabling users to complete their purchases from within the platform for those retailers that participate in its Instant Checkout program. However, this functionality is currently only available in the United States; in the rest of the world, we must still wait before being able to complete a purchase directly within ChatGPT.

Photo: OpenAI