OpenAI Upgrades ChatGPT Search With Shopping Features (techcrunch.com) 29
OpenAI has upgraded ChatGPT's search tool to include shopping features, allowing users to receive personalized product recommendations, view images and reviews, and access direct purchase links using natural language queries. TechCrunch reports: When ChatGPT users search for products, the chatbot will now offer a few recommendations, present images and reviews for those items, and include direct links to webpages where users can buy the products. OpenAI says users can ask hyper-specific questions in natural language and receive customized results. To start, OpenAI is experimenting with categories including fashion, beauty, home goods, and electronics. OpenAI is rolling out the feature in the default AI model for ChatGPT, GPT-4o, today for ChatGPT Pro, Plus, and Free users, as well as logged-out users around the globe.
[...] OpenAI claims its search product is growing rapidly. Users made more than a billion web searches in ChatGPT last week, the company told TechCrunch. OpenAI says it's determining ChatGPT shopping results independently, and notes that ads are not part of this upgrade to ChatGPT search. The shopping results will be based on structured metadata from third parties, such as pricing, product descriptions, and reviews, according to OpenAI. The company won't receive a kickback from purchases made through ChatGPT search. [...] Soon, OpenAI says it will integrate its memory feature with shopping for Pro and Plus users, meaning ChatGPT will reference a user's previous chats to make highly personalized product recommendations. The company previously updated ChatGPT to reference memory when making web searches broadly. However, these memory features won't be available to users in the EU, the U.K., Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein.
[...] OpenAI claims its search product is growing rapidly. Users made more than a billion web searches in ChatGPT last week, the company told TechCrunch. OpenAI says it's determining ChatGPT shopping results independently, and notes that ads are not part of this upgrade to ChatGPT search. The shopping results will be based on structured metadata from third parties, such as pricing, product descriptions, and reviews, according to OpenAI. The company won't receive a kickback from purchases made through ChatGPT search. [...] Soon, OpenAI says it will integrate its memory feature with shopping for Pro and Plus users, meaning ChatGPT will reference a user's previous chats to make highly personalized product recommendations. The company previously updated ChatGPT to reference memory when making web searches broadly. However, these memory features won't be available to users in the EU, the U.K., Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein.
"and notes that ads are not part of this upgrade" (Score:3)
Good thing they noted that ads are not part of THIS upgrade.
Yeah, this is just the proof of concept. The enshittification begins with the next upgrade of this "shopping" functionality after they've already collected a mountain of data of how to market to your individual tastes, just like all the other enshittified services out there.
No thanks.
Re: "and notes that ads are not part of this upgra (Score:5, Informative)
ChatGPT has begun the transformation from "your clever but unreliable buddy who sometimes confuses his imagination with reality" to "your clever but obnoxious buddy who has filled his garage with Amway products and steers any conversation towards why you should buy some more junk from him".
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately that seems to be the current trajectory of most services.. well, I guess we soon need an adblock for LLMs.
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Unless you're in Europe -- good ol' GDPR!
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OpenAI = Open Ad Integration
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If I tell it I'm vegetarian, will they stop serving me so many damn meat ads? Or are they trying to change my preferences by wearing down my will, because, profits?
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Everything in our profit driven capitalist society eventually deteriorates into a tool to get us to buy more stuff we don't need.
It's rightly called enshittification.
preprompt: Gently steer $user towards $paidAdv (Score:3)
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Here cometh the fall (Score:3)
This is a pathway to bias in results. A decision will be made at some point, by an executive hungry for a bonus or just a prick, that certain purchases are worth more than others. Even if they segment the two results, it's going to turn into google where your first ten results are ads. Why show anything that may cause someone to choose or see something that can negatively affect revenue? There's only so long one can hold onto pretending to have principles.
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Did you just explain why open source is better, and if we all had a strong basic income, couldn't we keep things like youtube up without all the ads?
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Open source will be used in the same way: Suggest products for profit by pimping them. People will trust AI like they trust search engines, indeed like Perplexity is becoming a browser.
You wanted truth, integrity, clear unbiased choices? Not when you're the product.
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What if advertisers figure out there's more money in financial trading? What if advertising is really more about trying to control other people's preferences than efficiency?
No one saw this coming (Score:3)
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It is an act of desperation, mostly.
Obviously the big promise of an "AGI", that is $100b in sales, has eluded poor Sam.
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Great thing about the internet: (Score:2)
Disgusting thing about the internet:
Everyone wants to sell you something and sell your data soul to big data.. to try and sell you something.
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It *could* actually be useful (Score:3)
Web merchant product search functionality is universally *awful." Every store's site is trying so hard to sell you *something* that it will show you all kinds of meaningless results that are related to your search by terms as useless as "the". Google's product search isn't much better, for the same reasons. If this thing can search Amazon better than Amazon can search Amazon, I'm in!
No ads... yet. (Score:3)
But probably referral links.
You need statistics and market share to charge a premium for targeted advertising.
Facebook started out ad-free. It was one of their 'selling' points. MySpace had ads, Facebook didn't.
Enshittification (Score:3)
You could already ask it about products. I can only imagine that money is now (or will soon) change hands, in return for preferential recommendations.
The enshittification begins.
Do not want (Score:2)
And I say this as a very pro-AI guy.
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What do you mean "pro-AI"?
Do you mean you think AI is a good thing, irrespective of its goals?
Do you mean you think it will be easy to do?
Do you mean you think AI is attractive? (as in "Ooooh, Shiny")
Do you mean something else?
To me "pro-AI" is an unjustifiable position, because I'm can only favor a subset of the potential results of having a strong AI present.
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I didn't think it was appropriate to make a tail of a disclaimer wag the dog of a post but I guess these are the times we live in.
The desperation gets worse (Score:2)
Looks like they still have no application that would make the excessive effort involwed worthwhile...