ChatGPT can now virtually try on clothes for you
TechCrunch Sarah Perez
ChatGPT now lets shoppers virtually try on clothes from photos. OpenAI is pushing harder into shopping, after an earlier checkout idea flopped.
Based on reporting by TechCrunch, Sarah Perez — read the original for the full story.
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OpenAI is trying again to make ChatGPT useful at the point where people are already holding a credit card: shopping. On Thursday, the company rolled out two new features worldwide — virtual try-on for clothes and accessories, plus a Favorites tool for saving items inside ChatGPT.
The try-on feature is the flashier one. Users can upload a selfie or a full-body photo and see how an item might look on them. In ChatGPT’s shopping results, it shows up as a new try on button. OpenAI also says people can upload an image of an item, such as a web screenshot, and ask the assistant to try it on.
Both features use the company’s new ChatGPT Images 2.5 model. OpenAI says that model gives it more natural lighting, richer textures, better follow-through on editing instructions, and lower image generation latency. Those are the kinds of claims that sound small until you’re waiting for a fake outfit preview to render and it keeps dragging.
Favorites is more practical. It lets users save products to a Library in the app and return to them later, alongside their try-on images. OpenAI is also betting on more open-ended shopping help: users can ask ChatGPT to assemble pieces for a style they describe, or upload celebrity outfit photos and ask it to identify purchasable items.
That last bit puts ChatGPT in territory long dominated by Pinterest and Google, especially for fashion discovery that can turn into sales. But the competition is already there. Google launched virtual try-on last year, and OpenAI has already had to back away from an earlier shopping idea, instant checkout, after it didn’t perform well. So this is less a victory lap than another test of whether people actually want their chatbot to be a fitting room.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
OpenAI keeps trying to turn ChatGPT into a shopping mall, which is exactly why this feels like a shrug in product form. A try-on button is useful; being nudged into buying things by a chatbot is the part that starts smelling like ads in a nicer font. The real winner here is probably the retailer who gets one more shot at conversion, not the person looking for a shirt.
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