On Monday, OpenAI announced an update to its web search tool in ChatGPT, known as ChatGPT search, with the goal of providing users with an enhanced online shopping experience.

When users search for products using ChatGPT, the chatbot will now provide a few personalized recommendations, display images and reviews of the suggested items, and include direct links to the web pages where users can purchase the products. According to OpenAI, users can ask highly specific questions in natural language and receive customized results. Initially, the company is focusing on categories such as fashion, beauty, home goods, and electronics.

The updated feature will be available to ChatGPT Pro, Plus, and Free users, as well as to logged-out users worldwide, starting Monday, as part of the GPT-4o default AI model.

This update is part of OpenAI’s efforts to compete with Google by offering a more personalized and improved experience for finding products and information online. Online shopping is a significant business for Google, but the advertising market for priority placements in Google Search has contributed to a decline in the product’s quality over time.

OpenAI reports that its search product is growing rapidly, with over a billion web searches conducted in ChatGPT last week, according to the company.

OpenAI determines ChatGPT shopping results independently, without the influence of ads, and bases them on structured metadata from third-party sources, such as pricing, product descriptions, and reviews. The company does not receive any commission from purchases made through ChatGPT search.

In a recent interview with Stratechery’s Ben Thompson, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman expressed a willingness to consider “tasteful” advertising, where OpenAI would charge affiliate fees for purchases made through ChatGPT, but would not sell priority placement in search results. Historically, Altman has been opposed to ads in ChatGPT.

Soon, OpenAI plans to integrate its memory feature with shopping for Pro and Plus users, allowing ChatGPT to reference a user’s previous conversations to provide highly personalized product recommendations. The company had previously updated ChatGPT to reference memory when conducting web searches. However, these memory features will not be available to users in the EU, the U.K., Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein.

In addition to the update, ChatGPT search will now display trending searches as users start typing a question, similar to Google Search’s autocomplete feature. ChatGPT search is also available on WhatsApp, allowing users to message the chatbot to get up-to-date answers.

OpenAI has explored shopping features through its AI “agent” platform, Operator, which can browse dozens of web pages to find relevant products for users. However, ChatGPT search with shopping offers a faster and more hands-on experience, still allowing users to search for products using natural language queries.