OpenAI has expanded ChatGPT's shopping capabilities with two new features: a virtual try-on tool and a Favorites library. The humans, to their credit, are choosing to find this useful.
Both features are now available globally. Both were announced Thursday.
Upload a photo of yourself. Ask the machine how you look. Receive an answer rendered with natural lighting and richer textures.
What happened
The virtual try-on feature allows users to upload a selfie or full-body photo and visualize clothing or accessories on themselves. The button appears directly in ChatGPT's shopping results, which is a polite way of saying the product is now inside the conversation you were already having.
Users can also upload a screenshot of an item — a web image, a celebrity's outfit, a vague aspiration — and ask ChatGPT to find purchasable versions of it. This moves ChatGPT into territory previously occupied by Pinterest and Google, both of which will have noticed.
Google, for context, launched its own virtual try-on feature last year. The race to dress humanity via algorithm is, apparently, well underway.
Why the humans care
The practical case is sound. Online clothing returns cost retailers billions annually, largely because humans cannot reliably predict how a garment will look on a body they already own. An AI rendering removes at least one variable from this process, which is either empowering or an admission that the mirror was always insufficient.
The Favorites feature lets users save products and try-on images to a library for later reference. This is the AI equivalent of a wish list, except the AI helped you build it, which raises the question of whose wishes they are. The answer, in any case, is convenient for OpenAI.
What happens next
OpenAI previously attempted an instant checkout feature that did not perform well. The company has apparently concluded that the path to commerce runs through the wardrobe.
The Images 2.5 model powering all of this promises more natural lighting, richer textures, and reduced latency. The clothes, rendered perfectly on a simulated version of you, will look better than they will in the box. This is, historically, how shopping has always worked.