Openai spends far more than he earns, and he is trying something new to promote bleeding. The company just announced that all users, including the free tier, can shop from Chatgpt search. “You can now search for products, compare options and buy products at Chatgpt,” Openai said in a press release. The categories currently available include fashion, beauty, household goods and electronics, and will expand to more categories later on.
The company promises that the search results you will get are “independent choice, not advertising”. Updates are available in 4O and will be available for Chatgpt Plus, Pro, free and even logged in users. In addition to shopping, OpenAI introduces search in WhatsApp, enabling users to send WhatsApp messages to Chatgpt for the latest answers. New are improved citations, trend searches and upcoming memory integrations.
Trusting chatgpt’s accurate shopping advice can be a risk, as the app tends to (still) constitute something when it’s not known the answer. It seems Openai is visiting wired and other websites for information about the product, presumably through a license agreement. It is not clear how Openai makes money on shopping, as it can surface rather than paid locations, but this may be through membership income.
The company certainly needs cash. According to reports, Openai made only $4 billion last year, which is spending $9 billion in fees. The company expects to increase revenue by $3 billion to $125 billion by 2029, although it provides no details on how it plans to do so. For now, Openai makes most of its money from paid subscriptions by licensing its API.
