What Is ChatGPT? A 2026 Guide for Merchants

ChatGPT is OpenAI’s AI chatbot, and now a Shopify sales channel. Learn how it works, what’s new, and how to use it to run a store.

ChatGPT is an AI assistant built by OpenAI that generates text, answers questions, writes content, and holds multiturn conversations based on natural language prompts.

Three in four business owners now use AI tools in some capacity, according to Shopify’s 2025 Business Strategy and Planning Survey.* Store owners use ChatGPT to draft product descriptions, respond to customer inquiries, build marketing copy, and work through business decisions faster.

This guide covers what ChatGPT is, how it works, and how to use it, and AI tools like it in your business.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence (AI) tool developed by OpenAI that generates human-like text, answers questions, and holds “conversations” based on natural language prompts. It runs on GPT (generative pretrained transformer), a large language model trained on broad internet text data to recognize patterns and produce human-like responses.

OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit and has since restructured into a capped-profit company. Microsoft has invested more than $13 billion and integrated OpenAI models across Bing, Copilot, and Azure.

ChatGPT launched publicly in November 2022 and reached one million users within five days. 

OpenAI has released new AI models at a rapid pace since, including:

• GPT-4 (2023)
• The o3 and o4-mini reasoning models (April 2025)
• GPT-5.5 (April 2026)

ChatGPT operates in a category that includes:

• Google’s Gemini
• Anthropic’s Claude
• Meta’s Llama

What does GPT stand for?

GPT stands for “generative pre-trained transformer”:

• Generative: The model produces new text rather than retrieving stored answers.
• Pre-trained: It learned language patterns from a large dataset before being fine-tuned for conversation.
• Transformer: The underlying neural network architecture that allows the model to weigh relationships between words across long passages of text.

ChatGPT is a form of generative AI—software that produces new content (text, images, code) in response to a prompt.

How does ChatGPT work?

ChatGPT runs on a large language model (LLM)—a type of AI trained to predict the next word in a sequence based on patterns across large volumes of text.

The underlying architecture is the transformer, a neural network that processes entire passages at once rather than word by word. An “attention” mechanism weighs relationships between words across long stretches of text. That’s what lets GPT follow nuanced instructions, hold context across a conversation, and adapt its tone to match the prompt.

Training happened in two stages. First, OpenAI exposed the model to large volumes of public internet text as input data to build a statistical model of language. Then OpenAI applied reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) to fine-tune the model. Human trainers ranked model outputs by quality, generating a reward signal that improved response accuracy over time.

GPT-2 is the only model in the GPT series with publicly available weights. GPT-3 and later models are proprietary, accessible only via OpenAI’s API or ChatGPT.

Key features of ChatGPT

ChatGPT handles writing, translation, coding, summarization, and Q&A across a free plan and several paid tiers.

Speed: ChatGPT generates near instant answers, whether drafting a product description, summarizing a document, or answering a customer inquiry.

Multilingual support: ChatGPT creates and translates content across more than 50 languages, and writes code in over 15 programming languages.

Image generation: ChatGPT Images 2.0, released April 2026, generates images natively from text prompts, with improved text rendering and multilingual support.

Safety controls: ChatGPT declines requests that would facilitate illegal activity and can direct users to relevant support resources.

Free and paid plans: The free plan includes core features with usage limits. 

Paid plans include: 

• Go ($8 per month)
• Plus ($20 per month)
• Pro ($200 per month)
• Business
• Enterprise

Paid plans add higher usage limits, access to newer models, and advanced tools including Deep Research and Sora, according to OpenAI’s pricing page.

What’s new in ChatGPT

OpenAI has released several updates to ChatGPT in 2026:

• GPT-5.5. Released April 2026, GPT-5.5 adds stronger reasoning, improved coding, and better handling of multistep tasks. It’s available to Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise users.
• ChatGPT Images 2.0. Launched April 2026, with improved text rendering, multilingual support, and advanced visual reasoning built in.
• Record Mode. ChatGPT can now transcribe and summarize meetings, voice notes, and brainstorms, then generate follow-ups, plans, or code from the recording.
• Codex. OpenAI’s agentic coding tool now works across VS Code, GitHub, CLI, and the ChatGPT iOS app, with support for automated pull request reviews.
• App connectors. ChatGPT now connects to 60-plus third-party apps, including Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, with write actions for creating and editing documents, emails, and spreadsheets.

ChatGPT pricing: free vs. paid plans

ChatGPT can be free. The free plan includes core chat features with usage limits. Paid plans add higher limits, newer models, and advanced tools. Prices below are per user per month, billed monthly, per OpenAI’s pricing page. 

Plan	Price	Model access	Key features
Free	$0	Limited access to GPT-5.5 Instant	Core chat, limited image generation, limited file uploads, web browsing
Go	$8	More access to GPT-5.5 Instant	More messages, uploads, image creation, longer memory
Plus	$20	Advanced reasoning with GPT-5.5 Thinking	Expanded messages and uploads, more complex image creation, expanded deep research, and agent mode
Pro	$100	Pro reasoning with GPT-5.5 Pro	More usage, Pro reasoning with GPT-5.5 Pro, maximum Codex tasks, unlimited image creation, maximum deep research, and agent mode
Enterprise	Contact sales	Pro reasoning with GPT-5.5 Pro + expanded context window	Enterprise security, SCIM, audit logs, custom context windows, SLAs, and advanced data control

OpenAI has said it plans to test ads in the Free and Go plans for US users. Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise are ad-free.

ChatGPT image generation (DALL-E and beyond)

ChatGPT’s image generation has moved well past DALL-E. ChatGPT Images 2.0, released April 2026, introduces improved text rendering, multilingual support, and advanced visual reasoning. 

It runs on gpt-image-2, OpenAI’s most capable image generation model, designed for complex visual tasks with stronger editing, better layouts, and more reliable instruction-following.

DALL-E 3 remains accessible via a dedicated DALL-E GPT for users who prefer it.

Store owners can use ChatGPT prompts to generate images for: 

• Mockups of packaging, labels, or branded materials before committing to print
• Social media graphics and promotional banners
• Lifestyle-style backgrounds for product photography
• Draft visual concepts to share with a designer or photographer

For product pages, AI-generated images don’t replace real product photography. Shoppers need accurate representations of color, texture, and scale to make purchase decisions. AI images work well for concept work and marketing assets, but high-quality ecommerce photography of the product remains the standard for listings.

Viral ChatGPT image prompts

In 2025, OpenAI’s new image generator went viral for its ability to create realistic Ghibli-style photos, leading to millions of new ChatGPT sign-ups, according to TechCrunch. Three prompt styles drove much of that volume.

The Studio Ghibli portrait trend saw users transforming photos into Ghibli-style anime illustrations, with more than 700 million images generated in the first week alone, per TechCrunch. 

The action figure and Barbie doll trend followed, with users turning photos into toy packaging— celebrities, politicians, and brands all participated, according to CBC News.

Example AI art prompts for each:

• Studio Ghibli portrait. “Wide-angle selfie of [subject], reimagined in Studio Ghibli animation style. Soft watercolor textures, lush green landscape, warm nostalgic lighting.”
• Action figure. “Create a realistic action figure of the person in this photo, displayed in a blister pack with accessories that reflect their job or hobbies.”
• Barbie doll. “Create a Barbie-style doll of the person in this photo in clear plastic box packaging. Include a name at the top and accessories that match their personality.”

For store owners, these formats show how a visual style AI trend can generate organic reach without paid media spend. The prompt supplies the style; the store owner supplies the brand context.

Limitations of ChatGPT

ChatGPT has real limitations that affect how reliably it can be used for business tasks:

• Hallucinations. ChatGPT can generate biased, plausible-sounding but factually incorrect answers. OpenAI acknowledges this directly; the interface displays the warning “ChatGPT can make mistakes. Consider checking important information.”
• No source citations. ChatGPT doesn’t cite sources by default, making it hard to verify the reliability of a response. Cross-check any factual claims before publishing or acting on them.
• Knowledge cutoff. Current ChatGPT models have a knowledge cutoff of August 2025, per OpenAI’s release notes. Events, products, or data published after that date won’t appear in responses unless ChatGPT uses web search.
• Context window limits. ChatGPT processes text within a finite context window—the amount of text it can consider at once. Very long documents or extended conversations may cause earlier content to drop out of the model’s active memory.
• Data privacy. By default, OpenAI may use conversations from free, Plus, and Pro accounts to train its models. Users can opt out via Settings > Data Controls. Business and Enterprise accounts are excluded from training by default, according to OpenAI.
• Environmental impact. AI data centers, including those powering ChatGPT, are a significant source of energy consumption. MIT News reports that electricity demands and water consumption are among the key environmental consequences of generative AI.
• AI-detector reliability. Content written or edited with ChatGPT may be flagged by AI detection tools, with varying accuracy. No detector is fully reliable, and false positives can affect writers who use AI as a drafting aid.

AI tools like ChatGPT: how it compares to alternatives

ChatGPT isn’t the only generative AI tool available. The right tool depends on the task. Here’s how some ChatGPT alternatives compare.

Claude vs. ChatGPT

Claude, built by Anthropic, and ChatGPT are the two most widely used AI writing and reasoning tools for business. For enterprise use cases, a Menlo Ventures report found enterprises prefer Anthropic’s Claude over OpenAI’s models. 

ChatGPT holds the stronger position on the consumer side, with users sending more than 2.5 billion prompts per day as of July 2025, per OpenAI via TechCrunch.

Both tools handle writing, summarization, coding, and analysis. Claude’s paid plans start at $20 per month and ChatGPT’s Plus plan is also $20 per month.

Perplexity vs. ChatGPT

Perplexity is an AI-powered search tool that retrieves current information from the web and cites its sources in every response. ChatGPT can also search the web, but defaults to its training knowledge unless prompted otherwise. 

Perplexity’s search-first design gives it a structural advantage for tasks that require up-to-date sourced information like:

• Market research
• Competitor lookups
• Current pricing

For tasks requiring long-form writing, content generation, or multi-step reasoning, ChatGPT’s broader toolset applies. 

Gemini vs. ChatGPT

Google’s Gemini, formerly known as Bard, and ChatGPT are direct competitors in the general-purpose AI assistant market.

ChatGPT led the generative AI app market in H1 2025 across downloads, revenue, and monthly active users, accounting for 63% of all generative AI app revenue and roughly double Gemini’s monthly active user base, per Sensor Tower. 

ChatGPT has broader third-party app connectors and $3 billion in cumulative mobile consumer spending as of late 2025, per Appfigures. 

Grok vs. ChatGPT

Grok, built by Elon Musk’s xAI, is integrated directly into X and is the primary AI tool for users on that platform. Grok reached upward of 20 million monthly active users by mid-2025, per an a16z report, a fraction of ChatGPT’s user base.

xAI’s Grok has faced content moderation issues, which TechCrunch noted may complicate its pitch to business customers. For general business tasks, ChatGPT’s broader toolset, larger user base, and more established enterprise offering give it a stronger position. Grok’s differentiated use case is real-time access to posts and conversations on X.

DeepSeek and Meta AI vs. ChatGPT

DeepSeek is an open-weight model from a Chinese lab that topped the App Store in January 2025 with models trained at a fraction of the cost of US competitors. 

Its open availability makes it more relevant as a developer tool than an AI business assistant. Meta AI is built into WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger, and launched as a standalone app in April 2025. 

Meta reported more than one billion Meta AI users, driven largely by its existing social media base rather than standalone AI adoption. For business tasks, ChatGPT’s toolset, paid plans, and enterprise offering give it a stronger position than either.

How to sign up for ChatGPT

ChatGPT is free to use and set up. Here’s how:

1. Go to chatgpt.com or get the app

ChatGPT is available at chatgpt.com on desktop, and as a free app on iOS and Android. You can try ChatGPT without an account—just type a prompt to get started. Creating an account saves your chat history and unlocks additional features.

2. Create an account

Select Sign up, then enter your email address and create a password. You can also sign up using an existing Google, Apple, or Microsoft account. Once registered, verify your email address by clicking the link OpenAI sends to your inbox.

3. Set your preferences and start chatting

Go to Settings to adjust your data controls, manage memory, and add custom instructions that shape how ChatGPT responds. Type a prompt in the text field to start a conversation. Use the thumbs down button below any response to flag unhelpful answers, or follow up in the same thread to refine results.

How to use ChatGPT for your Shopify business

In 2025, 28% of employed US adults used ChatGPT for work, up from 8% in 2023, according to Pew Research Center. 

Here are the most practical applications for store owners employing an AI strategy:

Create marketing content

Content generation is the most common AI use case among business owners, per Shopify’s 2025 Business Strategy and Planning Survey.* 

ChatGPT can do the full range: 

• Product descriptions
• Social media posts
• Blog drafts
• Email campaigns

AI copywriting tools can also rewrite existing content for different channels, optimize copy for search, and proofread for errors.

ChatGPT accepts voice and tone parameters. Specify a tone directly in your prompt, or paste existing copy and ask it to match the style. Treat AI marketing output as a first draft—because ChatGPT is working from a limited sample of your brand voice, plan to revise before publishing.

Shopify Magic is Shopify’s built-in AI for store owners. It generates product descriptions, email subject lines, and blog content directly in the Shopify admin, without switching between tools. For store owners who want AI-assisted content creation integrated into their workflow, Shopify Magic is the starting point.

Writing product copy across a large catalog is time-consuming, and maintaining a consistent brand voice adds another layer of difficulty. Mikey Moran, CEO at Private Label, uses Shopify Magic to solve both. “It literally saves me so much time it’s incredible,” Moran says. 

“Shopify Magic can come in and use all these different words that I know but might not use in my daily writing—and that really helps expand the words used on our site, which I think is really good for SEO.”

The cost case is also clear. According to Shopify’s 2025 Business Strategy and Planning Survey,* AI users are more likely than non-AI users to report reduced marketing costs.

📚 Read: What Is an AI Ad Copy Generator? Tools + Tips

Provide customer support

Fewer than a third of AI-using business owners currently apply AI to customer service, according to Shopify’s Business Strategy and Planning Survey, Q4 2025—making it one of the more underused applications relative to its potential.

Shopify Inbox is Shopify’s built-in live chat tool. It lets store owners chat with customers in real time from the Shopify admin or mobile app, and uses AI to suggest replies based on your store’s products and FAQ content. For store owners who want to start with AI-assisted customer communication, Shopify Inbox is the most direct path.

High-traffic stores often can’t staff live chat fast enough to keep up with customer volume. Moran found a solution in AI-assisted chat. “I had live chat on the store before and our staff couldn’t reply and keep up fast enough,” he says. “Now that it has this, it’s something I can bring back without a ton of people just sitting there when it’s slow.”

For more advanced workflows, third-party integrations via ChatGPT’s API, or AI agents, can handle common customer questions, escalate complex cases to a human agent, automate data entry, and create support tickets. Human agents can also use ChatGPT to draft personalized responses to customer inquiries faster.

Summarize content

ChatGPT can distill articles, reports, and documents into key points, cutting research time significantly. On paid plans, ChatGPT can fetch content from a URL directly. On the free plan, paste the text into the chat window instead.

Current context windows vary by model—32,000 tokens for the standard Instant model and up to 196,000 for Thinking and Pro models, per OpenAI. For very long documents, split the content into sections and summarize each one separately before asking ChatGPT to synthesize the results.

As of mid 2025, 26% of US adults have used ChatGPT to learn something new, up from 8% in 2023, according to Pew Research Center—a signal of how broadly people are using it to process and understand information.

Conduct market research

ChatGPT can outline a market’s size, segments, and customer demographics, identify challenges and opportunities, surface relevant statistics, and draft research summaries to accompany reports.

On paid plans, ChatGPT can search the web for current data. The free plan relies on training data with a knowledge cutoff of August 2025, per OpenAI’s release notes. Verify any figures against primary sources before using them in business decisions. Treat ChatGPT’s output as a starting framework and supplement with current industry reports.

Draft emails and communications

Delegating effectively to a new team member takes time. Especially when communicating across work and personal priorities. Lindsay Carter, founder at SET Active, used ChatGPT to solve it. “I wrote all of the things I’m having complications with in AI,” Carter says. “Pretend you are an expert in being an executive assistant to a founder and family who has kids, dogs, husband—and it shot out this whole email.”

ChatGPT can turn a rough list of bullet points into a polished email in seconds. Paste in your key points, specify the recipient and tone, and ask it to draft the message. It handles supplier outreach, customer follow-ups, partnership pitches, and internal communications equally well.

A few initial and mid-journey prompt patterns that work well for store owners:

• Bullet points to email. “Write a professional email to a supplier asking to renegotiate our wholesale pricing. Key points: [paste bullets].”
• Tone adjustment. “Rewrite this email in a warmer, more conversational tone: [paste draft].”
• Length reduction. “Shorten this email to three sentences while keeping the main ask: [paste draft].”

Sell directly inside ChatGPT with agentic storefronts

ChatGPT has become a product discovery channel and AI search engine. When shoppers ask for recommendations like a gift idea, a rain jacket for less than $200, or the best running shoe for wide feet, ChatGPT surfaces relevant products from merchants in its catalog. 

Shopify was the launch partner for OpenAI’s agentic commerce integration in September 2025, making Shopify store owners among the first to appear in ChatGPT shopping results.

Agentic Storefronts, launched in January 2026, let Shopify merchants manage their presence across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot, and Gemini from a single place in the Shopify admin. 

Shopify handles the technical integration. Store owners don’t need to build separate connections to each platform. When a shopper selects a product in ChatGPT, checkout completes on the merchant’s own site, preserving the merchant’s brand experience, pricing logic, and payment methods, with no extra fees. 

AI-attributed orders on Shopify grew 11 times between January 2025 and January 2026. Agentic Storefronts are rolling out to all Shopify stores in 2026.

📚 Read: Agentic Commerce on Shopify: How It Works

ChatGPT vs. Shopify Sidekick: when to use which

Both tools use AI to assist with business tasks, but they operate in fundamentally different ways.

Shopify Sidekick lives inside the Shopify admin and has direct access to your store data. 

It can take action on your behalf, including: 

• Editing themes
• Building automations
• Generating reports
• Creating customer segments
• Making changes to your store

It’s included with every Shopify plan, with no additional setup required.

ChatGPT operates outside your store. It has no access to your Shopify data, order history, or customer records, but it has a broader general-purpose range. 

As a general rule:

• Use Sidekick when the task involves your store data or requires an action inside the Shopify admin.
• Use ChatGPT when the task involves writing, research, or planning that doesn’t require store access.

The two tools work well together. Draft a blog post in ChatGPT, then use Sidekick to publish it. Research a product category in ChatGPT, then use Sidekick to update inventory or create a new collection.

Ethical concerns with ChatGPT

ChatGPT’s rapid adoption has raised substantive concerns about copyright, privacy, deepfakes, jobs, and environmental impact. These and other dangers of AI require users to consider the risks.

Copyright

OpenAI faces multiple active lawsuits over its training data. Book authors including Paul Tremblay, Sarah Silverman, and Michael Chabon alleged OpenAI infringed their copyrights by using their work to train its models. In November 2025, a German court ruled OpenAI violated copyright law in a case brought by music rights organization GEMA. The legal status of AI training data remains unsettled.

Privacy

By default, OpenAI may use conversations from free, Plus, and Pro accounts to train its models. Users can opt out via Settings > Data Controls. Store owners and professionals handling sensitive client information should review OpenAI’s data policies before using ChatGPT for confidential work.

Deepfakes and misinformation

AI image generation and video creation tools, including those connected to ChatGPT, can produce realistic fake content. More than half of US adults (66%) are highly worried about people getting inaccurate information from AI, according to Pew Research Center.

Jobs

The same Pew Research Center survey found more than half of US adults are extremely or very concerned about AI eliminating jobs, compared with 25% of AI experts surveyed. The near-term impact is most visible in roles centered on routine writing, data entry, and basic research tasks.

Environmental impact

AI data centers powering tools like ChatGPT consume significant energy and water. MIT News reports that electricity demand and water consumption are among the key environmental consequences of generative AI, a concern that grows as usage scales up.

AI ChatGPT FAQ

What are alternatives to ChatGPT?

Some alternatives to ChatGPT include:

• Google Gemini. Integrates with Google Workspace and Android.
• Anthropic’s Claude. Preferred by many enterprise users.
• Perplexity. AI-powered search with cited sources.
• xAI’s Grok. Integrated into X.
• Meta AI. Built into WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook.
• DeepSeek. Open-weight model that can be run locally.

Can ChatGPT be used for business?

Yes, ChatGPT can be used for business. People may use ChatGPT for business tasks, including: 

• Content generation
• Market research
• Customer communication
• Email drafting
• Summarizing documents

According to the Pew Research Center, 28% of employed US adults used ChatGPT for work in 2025, up from 8% in 2023.

Is ChatGPT generative AI?

Yes, ChatGPT is a form of generative AI. It’s software that produces new content (text, images, code) in response to a prompt. It runs on GPT (generative pre-trained transformer), a large language model trained on broad internet text data to recognize patterns and generate human-like responses.

What AI is better than ChatGPT?

No single AI is better than ChatGPT across all tasks. Claude is preferred by many enterprise users for coding and long-document analysis, according to a Menlo Ventures report. Perplexity is stronger for sourced web research. Gemini integrates more deeply with Google Workspace. The best tool depends on the task.

How is Perplexity AI different from ChatGPT?

Perplexity is different from ChatGPT because it’s a search-first tool. It retrieves current information from the web and cites its sources in every response. ChatGPT is a general-purpose assistant that defaults to its training knowledge unless web search is enabled. Perplexity is stronger for tasks requiring up-to-date sourced information; ChatGPT has a broader toolset for writing, reasoning, and content generation.