In the latest edition of Omni Talk’s Retail Fast Five, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Mirakl, Ownit AI, and Ocampo Capital Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga discuss: If they're Buying Or Selling: ChatGPT Search?

For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/uDYRYCTUsOk

OpenAI has launched Chat GPT search.

According to CNBC, OpenAI on Thursday launched ChatGPT search, positioning the company to better compete with search engines like Google, Microsoft, Bing and perplexity.

In July, OpenAI announced it was beta testing a prototype of the search engine called Search GPT and now it's officially rolled the product into ChatGPT.

OpenAI says users can now quote search in a more natural, intuitive way, end quote and ask follow up questions, quote just like you would in a conversation, end quote.

The search model is a fine tuned version of OpenAI's most powerful AI model yet, GPT4O and is fueled in part by third party search providers and content provided by news industry partners.

Chris, are you buying or selling ChatGPT search?

Oh, and I'm, I'm, I'm buying, I'm buying this in a big way.

In fact, I'm like, I'm, I've, I've jumped so far in the deep end of the pool, you can't even see my bald head.

And honestly, because I think this is 100 going to change the way we shop online.

Keep in mind too, Ann.

Yeah.

Yes, 100.

I really, I'm, I'm really buying this one.

Hard hook, line and sinker.

Because we are, we're only one week into the release of this, like barely a week and I can already see the potential.

I tried it yesterday.

I don't know if you saw my post on LinkedIn, but I did, I tried.

I need, I need a new winter coat, right?

And so, so I started using it just to play around with it and I'm like, basically like say, you know what, I live in Minneapolis.

I want a winter coat for under a certain amount of dollars.

Create a matrix for me that, you know, compares all the quotes that I should be looking at and, and gives me the characteristic breakdown of what code has what, and put it in a chart for me and let me know what I should do.

And it did it and it was pretty cool.

Now, now granted there's still a lot of things that need to come together, particularly on the data side.

Like the model's only as good as the data.

Which retailers, if you're listening, get your data right if you want to win in this new search landscape.

But that's one, you know, that's one thing.

And then you got to figure out how to get commerce conducted off it, get images.

So the user interface still needs to take shape.

But man, and I'm, I'm so excited about this.

Like I'm, I'm Almost like Jim in American Pie if I'm not too careful.

But it's super, super cool.

And Google is going to have to start adapting their experience fast to counter this because I was on Google trying to do the same thing and it's, it was not nearly as easy.

I know they're thinking about it.

In fact I got some texts from, from some Googleites yesterday after they saw my post.

The, you know, talking about all the things that need to happen to make this happen.

Which is, which is really cool to think about and gets my mind going because but man the, the, the shots have been fired on this and holy cow is my opinion in terms of, of where this goes next and, and we're going to see it through all angles.

We're going to see it on you know, through the search engines, we're going to see it online through the retailers own sites.

Like it's coming and it is a better way to look for products.

Like I'm curious for you, you're in the home furnishing space right now because you're moving.

Wouldn't this be advantageous for you then having to go through the list of preset filters that limit what you want and the language with which you can use to describe the things you're looking for?

I don't know but I'm curious what you think.

I think we're looking at this in a couple of different ways.

I think on the Google side of things Google does have the product imagery, they have the shopping experience.

I think where Google still needs to improve is in the like you said like not every question that you query with Google has the, the natural language response yet like you're getting from chat GPT.

But I also tried the search GPT function and I think like that still has a long way to come.

Like so many more prompts in there to like get it out to get, get the export that you would want and I think that already comes naturally to people going to Google or Google Properties to search for product already.

So I think it's going to be like a real race ultimately ending in like the consumer getting a so much a much simpler search process and search changing significantly in how we search for things within the next year.

Even like that's what I think is so exciting.

And it's, it's.

You're already behind retailers.

Like, this is where I think you need to put a lot of focus and investment as we're headed into this year.

Yeah.

It'll be like a 26, 27, 28 investment horizon.

But I have no idea.

But the other point too, and like, you brought this up on a webinar we did recently.

Like, I got thinking about the possibility of ad insertion within these Nash natural language queries that you're making to like, those are going to convert like crazy.

Like, hey, I want this, you know, with this characteristics, I want it delivered to me now.

Who can give it to me?

What, what's the best price you can give me?

And man, how the technology starts to change around that whole idea too.

It's just.

Oh, man.

Well, Google's already doing that.

Google's already doing that right now with their new shopping tools.

And it is unbelievable.

Like, I started doing that, like you said, with home furnishings and like taking a picture of a chair and then seeing that across the board.

Like, you're already seeing the deals that you can add the, like, they have the discount codes in some of the pictures.

It's like, this is just insane, the amount of data I now have at my fingertips as a consumer.

So, yeah, if you kind of already know what you want.

Like, Google is crushing it right now with all their new rollouts and their new innovations they put particularly around pricing.

So, yeah, I mean, it's just, it's, it's a cool time to be in retail because it's going to change a lot here over the next 10 years.