ChatGPT Search Update Brings Shopping Feature, Multiple Citation Support

OpenAI has announced new capabilities for its ChatGPT Search feature. The San Francisco-based AI firm is adding a new experimental shopping experience to the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, which will showcase products in a more visual manner and share a direct link to buy. Additionally, the company is also adding utility features such as multiple citations for the same information, search capability for its WhatsApp bot, as well as trending searches and autocomplete suggestions. The AI firm said these features will be rolled out over the next few days.

In a series of posts on X (formerly known as Twitter), the official handle of OpenAI detailed the new search-based features for ChatGPT. The company claimed that the web search functionality is one of its fastest-growing features, with more than one billion web searches in the last week. It was first released in November 2024 to its paid subscribers. It was expanded to all users (including those not registered to the platform) in February.

Among the new capabilities, the most notable one is the new shopping experience. It is currently available as an experiment and allows users to find information about and purchase products directly from the AI chatbot’s interface. ChatGPT, with the web search feature, will now show images of the products, visual product detail cards with pricing and reviews, as well as direct links to buy products.

The new shopping experience automatically triggers when users ask the chatbot a query about a product. Users can also see the pricing of the same product on different websites or different products to compare and make an informed decision. 

The shopping features are currently rolling out to ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers, those on the free tier of the platform, and the logged-out users globally. The AI firm claims that the recommended products are not ads, however, it did not specify if it will earn a commission on the purchases made on the platform.

In December 2024, OpenAI introduced a phone number (+1-800-242-8478) that users can save on WhatsApp and directly begin conversing with the chatbot. So far, the WhatsApp version of ChatGPT did not offer access to real-time information. OpenAI is now adding web search capability to it, allowing users to ask queries about recent events and even seek live sports scores.

Citations from responses sourced from the Internet are also being improved. Whenever ChatGPT uses information from a web-based source, it will now add multiple citations so that users can verify it across multiple URLs. Additionally, tapping on citations will now highlight the text that refers to that source.

Finally, OpenAI is also adding a couple of quality-of-life features. ChatGPT on mobile apps and the web client will now show trending searches. These are the most searched topics on ChatGPT to help users discover interesting topics. Further, the chatbot will also offer autocomplete suggestions when users begin typing a query.