OpenAI just turned every product page into a competitive audition, and most won't even know they're being evaluated.
On November 24, OpenAI launched Shopping Research, a new ChatGPT feature that actively research products, compounds information from across the web, and builds personalized buyer's guides in just minutes. The tool is available to all logged-in ChatGPT users with nearly unlimited usage throughout the holidays.
But here's what matters: ChatGPT isn't just searching anymore. It's judging.
The global AI shopping assistant market is exploding from $3.42 billion in 2024 to a projected $37.45 billion by 2034, growing at 27% annually. Conversational commerce is expected to reach $32.6 billion by 2035, with 89% of companies already testing or deploying AI solutions.
The big difference with ChatGPT? It has 800 million weekly active users. When it recommends products, it matters much more.
Shopping Research uses a specialized GPT-5 mini variant trained specifically for shopping tasks, designed to evaluate retail products and cite sources accurately. Users describe what they need, ChatGPT asks clarifying questions about budget and features, and then researches across the web for specs, prices, and reviews.
OpenAI explicitly stated that user experiences shared on Reddit may be considered more trustworthy than paid marketing or product page reviews. ChatGPT is actively ranking lower branded content in favor of third-party validation.
OpenAI's team admits that identifying objective, unpaid, or real user reviews has been a hard task and it's impossible to get it 100% correct. The challenge is now that ChatGPT is paying more attention to Reddit threads and user forums when researching your products.
For brands, this creates three problems:
Shopping Research seems to perform especially well in detail-heavy categories like electronics, beauty, kitchen appliances, and sports or outdoor gear. These are precisely the categories where specifications matter; user reviews drive decisions, and forum discussions are prolific.
The tool has known limitations around pricing accuracy, with Axios testing finding price discrepancies between ChatGPT's recommendations and actual retailer websites.
A Forrester study shows that 73% of marketing decision-makers plan to increase conversational commerce investments by up to 50% over the next two years. But Forrester also predicts that by 2025, less than one-fifth of global brands will have implemented corresponding functionalities.
Here's why that gap matters: Shopping Research aggregates signals from dozens of sources simultaneously. If your product price varies by 20% across platforms, or your key features are described differently on each channel, AI doesn't know which data to trust. Brands with fragmented digital footprints get filtered out, not because they're bad products, but because they're unreliable data sources.
Audit Your Third-Party Presence: Your Amazon listings, Reddit discussions, and review sites are now direct inputs to AI recommendations. Are they consistent? Updated? Favorable?
Monitor Omnichannel Sentiment: If ChatGPT weights Reddit higher than your product pages, what are users actually saying?
Optimize Structured Data: AI models prefer clean, structured information. Product specs, clear feature lists, and standardized categorization make your offerings easier to process.
Test Your Own Brand: Try Shopping Research yourself. Search for products in your category. Are you appearing? How are you positioned?
Prepare for Merchant Programs: OpenAI has introduced an allow-listing process for retailers. Early participants will have better data representation.
A significant number of customers have already used or plan to use generative AI for shopping. When shoppers engage with AI assistance, purchases are completed 47% faster. This isn't a trend. It's a fundamental shift in how product discovery works.
AI platforms are becoming the gatekeepers of commercial information, and they're operating with different rules than traditional search engines. Google rewards sites that optimize keywords and backlinks. AI platforms reward brands that maintain consistent, high-quality information across every touchpoint where users discuss, review, or compare products.
The answer is a resounding yes, but more important is the next question in line: "Why aren't we already doing it?"
ChatGPT's Shopping Research is just the most visible example of a broader phenomenon: AI platforms are mediating the relationship between brands and consumers. They're not neutral; they have preferences, priorities, and quality standards.
Your brand is either meeting those standards or being filtered out. There's no middle ground.
Brands that move now have a window to establish themselves before AI shopping becomes saturated. And that window is closing fast.