ChatGPT Local Apps, Brands Beat AIOs, Deceiving SMBs, AI for the Holidays

Local Apps in ChatGPT

One of ChatGPT's major strategic challenges is local search. OpenAI is making big investments in shopping with its new Checkout capability and Agentic Commerce Protocol, but so far not in local. Local is equally if not more strategic than shopping, but not as easily monetized. Local ChatGPT results are acceptable in many cases, but lag behind Google in terms of features and quality. Indeed, when local searchers can't find what they're looking for on ChatGPT, they turn to Google. We've been talking on the podcast for some time about this problem and how ChatGPT really needs to address it to be competitive with Google. At its developer day yesterday in San Francisco, the company made several announcements. One of them was an SDK for apps, which included a number of launch partners. This SDK effectively brings third-party app experiences into ChatGPT. Zillow is one of the launch partners, which allows users to search for real-estate listings on ChatGPT and then invoke Zillow. After that it provides a fairly robust version of the Zillow site/app experience within ChatGPT. The launch and soon-to-launch partners, in addition to Zillow, include AllTrails, Booking, Canva, Coursera, DoorDash, Expedia, Figma, Instacart, Khan Academy, OpenTable, Peloton, Spotify, Target, TheFork, Thumbtack, Tripadvisor and Uber.