Long live the AI wars

This week a tech tipster called Abhishek Yadav went through the code of the ChatGPT desktop app and found something nobody is talking about yet: a button that says "Claim (your business) on ChatGPT", an ID check to prove it's really yours, a place for your category, photos, logo and products, and a way to hand the page over to someone else to look after it for you. The Tech Outlook wrote it up on 21 October. OpenAI hasn't announced it, so it might never come out, but if it does, wow. Right now ChatGPT just pieces you together from whatever it can find online, and this would let you tell it yourself.

It's a dog eat dog world, mate

Google has owned this space forever. Apple and Microsoft have their own versions now, but this is a Google thing, it's the one thing Google does that ChatGPT doesn't, so it makes sense for it to be true. ChatGPT already borrows its local information from other people, Yelp since July, and if I was them I'd want my own as well, because it's a dog eat dog world, mate. Will businesses claim it? Yes they will, and it's great. And who loses? Well, Google loses.

It's what you told her to write

Now the ID check. Getting a Google Business Profile is not a simple process, but for all the right reasons, so Google already has the trust there. The reviews are where ChatGPT could win, and where Google should be better at spotting what's going on. It needs to be harder to add a review, and I don't mean harder in practice, I mean the person adding the review should have to prove themselves too, the same way the business does. You should have to prove you've actually used the product or service, and that would make it a lot harder to get your mate or your mum to add one. This drives me nuts. You can see the fake reviews, you can see the way your mum writes it, because it's what you told her to write. There's nothing in the code that says ChatGPT will do this, it's what I'd do.

You should have to prove you've actually used the product or service.

Is it scary, one company holding the page where your business tells its story? So? Google has been holding it for twenty years.

Loving the AI wars at the moment, because it's us who win here, the businesses. Long live the AI wars!