ChatGPT adds Try On button, Favorites for shopping

OpenAI has been testing how ChatGPT fits into shopping, and not every attempt has stuck: an earlier instant checkout feature ended up not performing well, prompting the company to pivot. The new pair of features — virtual try-on and a Favorites library — represents a shift toward helping users visualize and organize products before they buy, rather than completing the purchase.

The timing is notable because AI assistants are still probing consumer shopping use cases. Agentic AI startup Instinct recently began pushing product recommendations to users, but some felt those proactive recommendations overreached, reading more like ads than helpful suggestions. Against that backdrop, OpenAI's try-on and save functions are more user-initiated: you ask, it shows or stores.

OpenAI says the features run on its newly launched ChatGPT Images 2.5 model, which it claims delivers more natural lighting, richer textures, more reliable editing instructions, and lower image generation latency. That technical backbone matters because try-on quality hinges on how realistic the rendered image looks. Still, whether ChatGPT becomes people's first choice for fashion discovery remains to be seen, especially since Google launched virtual try-on last year and Pinterest and Google already dominate the space where inspiration turns into retail sales.