OpenAI is rolling out new business profiles inside ChatGPT, a change that lets companies influence how the chatbot presents them to users. The feature moves the product a step closer to the role Google has long played as a starting point for consumer discovery, and it opens a new contest over advertising revenue in search.

The company's stated aim is to make ChatGPT a stronger engine for helping people find businesses and services. The new profiles give businesses a way to shape how they appear when users ask the assistant for recommendations or information, which is the core of what search results have traditionally offered. Commentary on the launch has framed it as making ChatGPT "just a little bit more like Google", reflecting how far the chatbot has moved from a tool for drafting text toward one used for everyday lookups.

The scale of that shift is central to the story. A Spanish-language report in Wired, citing OpenAI, puts ChatGPT at about one-fifth of Google searches. Whether that figure is measured the same way as Google's own search volume has not been established in the material available, but it indicates how much ground the chatbot has gained as a channel through which people look for information online. The change in how people find things on the internet is the broader framing of the development.

That shift carries commercial stakes. Search has been built on advertising, and giving businesses a direct way to shape visibility inside an AI assistant raises the question of how such placement will be sold, ranked and disclosed. The move is likely to intensify competition among technology companies for the advertising money that flows through search, and it places OpenAI in more direct contest with the established search business.

Several details remain unconfirmed. The available reporting does not specify the rollout's geographic scope or timing, nor does it say what the new profiles will cost businesses. It also does not explain how businesses will be ranked or verified within the feature, questions that will determine how much weight a profile carries against an organic answer and how users are protected from misleading claims. Until OpenAI sets out those terms in more detail, the practical effect of the change for businesses and consumers in India and elsewhere remains open.

Source: techcrunch.com

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