OpenAI is making another attempt at turning ChatGPT into a shopping companion. On Thursday, the company announced two new features rolling out globally: virtual try-on for clothing and accessories, and a Favorites function for saving products to look at later.
Neither idea is new to online retail. What matters here is the context. AI assistants are still trying to figure out where they fit in consumer shopping, and OpenAI's own track record in this area is mixed.
How virtual try-on works
The try-on feature asks users to upload a selfie or a full-body photo. ChatGPT then generates an image showing how a piece of clothing or an accessory might look on them. In shopping results, the option appears as a new Try On button.
A chatbot answer may have played a part in one of the most consequential US foreign policy decisions of the past year. According to a report from Time magazine, President Trump spent hours questioning Elon Musk's Grok in December 2025, including about how Venezuelans would react if their president were removed. About a month later, the US invaded Venezuela and captured President Nicolás Maduro.
The account comes from a single source who spoke to Time. It has not been independently confirmed in the material available to us. But it adds a new dimension to the debate over how AI systems are used at the top of government.
OpenAI has parted ways with three researchers from its safety team. According to The Wall Street Journal, which reported the news on Thursday, the three allegedly passed confidential company information to an outside AI safety organization.
The timing matters. The departures land in a week when OpenAI is already under pressure over how it handles safety, both inside the company and in the products it ships.
What OpenAI says happened
OpenAI confirmed the departures in a statement to the WSJ. A spokesperson said the company had "parted ways with three individuals for violating our policies on accessing and handling sensitive company information."
Not every step in an AI agent needs a model that writes. Many steps only need a model that picks. That is the idea behind Strands Decider 2B, a new open-source release from Amazon Web Services' Strands Labs team. AWS describes it as a lightweight "decision model" built to make fast choices inside agentic workflows without generating any text.
The model is out now on Hugging Face. The full codebase, training scripts and examples are on GitHub. AWS has tuned it for local use and quick experiments, so developers can run it on their own laptops as well as in public cloud environments.
Airbnb's fall product update pushes the company in two directions at once. In the physical world, it is adding more services to compete with hotels. In the app, it is using AI and its own user network to help travelers decide where to go and what to do.
The headline feature is AI-powered search for properties. Alongside it come expanded in-stay services and a new set of social tools built around friends' travel history.
AI search, but not a chatbot
Airbnb has been careful with AI. CEO Brian Chesky has deliberately avoided a chatbot-style interface, and he hinted at the new search feature earlier this year. The result is a toggle in the app rather than a conversation window.
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