As part of our efforts to make ChatGPT an even better consumer discovery engine, OpenAI is releasing a number of new features designed to give businesses control over how users interact with their businesses.
The company on Tuesday unveiled its Business Hub, which serves as a place for businesses to create business profiles. The profile is similar to the kind of profiles Google and other search engines already offer, allowing businesses to review and update information about their products and services. This feature is currently in beta.
Eligible businesses can also create and launch a dedicated business agent that allows ChatGPT users to ask questions about the business and its products.
“ChatGPT has become the platform where people and businesses connect through AI, as people use AI to discover products, compare options, and make decisions,” the company said on Tuesday. “Today’s announcement is an early step in bringing enterprises deeper into ChatGPT.”
In a move reminiscent of Google Analytics, Business Hub will give users access to limited business insights. These insights reveal how ChatGPT users interact with your product, including profile views, business mentions, website clicks, and other metrics.
Companies will have to verify profiles through a formal process, but the company did not provide details on what that process involves. Benji Chomer, vice president of monetization at OpenAI, told reporters on Monday that the company has “multiple verification methods that we use for different types of businesses in different markets.”
OpenAI previously sought to position ChatGPT as an e-commerce hub where users can directly purchase products. This effort, using a commission system, was seen as a potentially huge revenue stream and a way to make ChatGPT a more direct competitor to Amazon. But that project ultimately didn’t get off the ground, and the company scrapped the effort in March, which even included a “checkout cart” feature.
By integrating business profiles and intelligence, ChatGPT appears to be moving closer to the Google that web users have relied on since the advent of the internet to understand the companies they want to shop with. It remains to be seen whether this effort will yield better results than efforts to make ChatGPT a direct e-commerce hub.
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