According to Zhitong Finance APP, OpenAI, a leader in the field of AI large models and generative AI applications, has now allowed users to conduct online inquiries within the ChatGPT application, similar to a &#34;one-click shopping&#34; generative AI feature. This is the latest move by the artificial intelligence unicorn company to expand the ecosystem of its globally popular AI chatbot—ChatGPT, aiming to continuously enhance its comprehensive advantages over competitors in the generative AI application field such as Google, Perplexity AI, and xAI founded by Elon Musk.
It is understood that OpenAI, a leader in the generative AI field, has added a &#34;shopping feature&#34; to ChatGPT, allowing users to accurately compare products and conveniently make purchases on external websites. The one-click shopping extension, based on a similar &#34;AI search function,&#34; is currently only available for a limited number of product categories, but plans to expand to more categories over time.
From the perspective of software engineers and some market observers, this significant update to the OpenAI ChatGPT application is an important measure for OpenAI to position ChatGPT as a so-called &#34;everything app&#34; platform and to enhance user engagement.
User feedback and digital statistics indicate that last week, OpenAI users conducted over 1 billion web browsing searches through ChatGPT, suggesting that an increasing number of users prefer to combine AI large models like o3 and o4-mini with the in-app &#34;online search&#34; for direct AI chat-style Q&amp;A inquiries—similar to the cutting-edge &#34;AI search&#34; feature of generative AI—rather than using traditional search methods like Google Search.
&#34;Shopping Search&#34; Based on the ChatGPT Ecosystem
Under the new option announced on Monday Eastern Time, active users of ChatGPT and unlogged visitors can quickly compare products and jump to external websites like Amazon through the built-in one-click shopping links in ChatGPT for convenient online shopping operations. However, according to some OpenAI users, the first available product categories are limited to certain consumer electronics, fashion, beauty, and home goods, with plans to expand to more product categories in the future.
According to the latest summary of user feedback, this newly embedded shopping feature is open to all 500 million active users of ChatGPT and unlogged free visitors of the AI chatbot.
This &#34;generative AI shopping feature,&#34; similar to the &#34;AI search&#34; shopping function of competitors like Perplexity AI, is one of several important feature updates launched by OpenAI on Monday, making the ChatGPT AI chatbot application compete more directly with other consumer recommendation and review sources such as CNET and Wirecutter under The New York Times, as well as &#34;AI search&#34; competitors like Perplexity AI. An OpenAI spokesperson stated that purchases made by users through ChatGPT will not generate affiliate commission revenue for the AI company
<img src="https://imageproxy.pbkrs.com/https://img.zhitongcaijing.com/image/20250429/1745884623367692.png?x-oss-process=image/auto-orient,1/interlace,1/resize,w_1440,h_1440/quality,q_95/format,jpg" alt="1745884617(1).png" original-src="https://imageproxy.pbkrs.com/https://img.zhitongcaijing.com/image/20250429/1745884623367692.png"/>
OpenAI recently stated that the online search feature similar to Perplexity's &#34;AI search&#34; is one of the most popular and fastest-growing sub-functions of this AI chatbot, with over 1 billion web searches conducted directly through the ChatGPT application ecosystem last week.
Last year, OpenAI successfully launched the globally popular &#34;GPTs App Store,&#34; significantly expanding the OpenAI ecosystem, allowing brands or developers to build exclusive generative AI application plugins for ChatGPT. The newly added shopping feature provides brands with the &#34;most direct traffic entry,&#34; which is expected to attract more developers to integrate with ChatGPT and the &#34;GPTs App Store,&#34; strengthening the network effect of the ChatGPT platform ecosystem.
For the iterative updates of OpenAI's large models, the data and model flywheel serves as a perfect assistant, expected to help the &#34;ChatGPT application ecosystem&#34; thrive globally. For example, e-commerce scenarios bring a large amount of high-value data such as real-time prices, inventory, and reviews, which feed back into model training and significantly enhance the accuracy of online searches and AI large model recommendations, further increasing user reliance.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently revealed that the global user base covered by this technology company focused on generative AI applications has surpassed 800 million, marking a significant milestone. &#34;Overall, about 10% of the global population is using our AI system—the ChatGPT application system, which is now quite large,&#34; Altman stated in a recent interview. Altman disclosed that the company's user count doubled in &#34;just a few weeks,&#34; mainly due to the newly launched GPT-4.5 generative AI application and the substantial user increase brought by the Ghibli-style text-to-image feature.
OpenAI's Ambition for a &#34;Universal App&#34;
From the AI chatbot's question-and-answer style rapid inquiry to the Ghibli-style text-to-image feature, and the latest one-click shopping feature embedded within the ChatGPT application ecosystem, OpenAI's ambition is to strive to make ChatGPT a &#34;universal app&#34; that integrates AI search engine functionality, AI voice assistant, online convenient shopping features, and video generator.
The latest addition of the online shopping feature aims to increase users' dwell time within the AI chatbot application ecosystem and help ChatGPT maintain its leading position over generative AI competitors such as Anthropic, Alphabet's Google AI platform, and xAI founded by Elon Musk in the long term
According to reports, AI startup Perplexity AI Inc., which focuses on the AI search field, has also implemented more online shopping features to achieve user scale expansion. Recently, Perplexity announced that paid subscribers of Perplexity Pro in the U.S. market will be able to experience a new AI e-commerce experience called &#34;Buy with Pro,&#34; which allows them to quickly obtain product information and market analysis for items they wish to purchase using AI search on the Perplexity website or app, and seamlessly view specific products from particular merchants. This means that products from Shopify merchants will be able to be listed in bulk in Perplexity's new AI shopping tool.
In less than two years, OpenAI has expanded the ChatGPT application from a purely Q&amp;A-style AI chatbot to an application ecosystem that integrates search engine functions, AI voice assistants, app stores, and e-commerce entry points, with a future focus on the &#34;universal application.&#34;
This series of layouts reflects OpenAI's ambition to create what it calls the &#34;OpenAI Universal Application&#34;: to enable high-frequency scenarios such as daily searches, one-click convenient shopping, content generation, text-to-image, and AI voice assistants to occur within the ChatGPT application, enhancing usage duration and data accumulation. In the future, without inserting advertisements, OpenAI could achieve multi-channel revenue through B2B APIs, value-added subscriptions, paid GPTs, commercial AI search, and potential e-commerce referral commissions, while laying an important foundation for future multimodal AGI with significant usage scenarios and big data.
It is reported that OpenAI recently projected that its revenue will grow nearly 1000% by 2029. The rapid revenue growth expectation for OpenAI will be driven by multiple avenues. First, the subscription revenue from its flagship product ChatGPT is expected to grow from $8 billion in 2025 to $50 billion in 2029; revenue from providing API access is expected to grow from $2 billion this year to $22 billion by 2029; and revenue related to AI agents is expected to reach $29 billion by 2029. Last month, media reports indicated that the pricing for AI agents ranges from $2,000 to $20,000 per month, depending on the level of functionality, covering different tiers from software development to PhD-level research

OpenAI

OpenAI has launched a new shopping feature for ChatGPT, allowing users to directly compare and purchase products within the app, aimed at competing with rivals like Google. This feature is currently available for a limited range of product categories and will expand to more categories in the future. This update is seen as an important step for OpenAI in transforming ChatGPT into a "universal application," with over 1 billion web searches conducted through ChatGPT, indicating user interest in this new feature

Zhitong

From AI chat to online shopping, OpenAI strives to make ChatGPT the "universal application" of the AI era