What happened

Until now, asking ChatGPT a question mostly got you back paragraphs of text. Now the answer can turn into something you tap and use. On 7 October (US time), OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, announced that the AI powering ChatGPT’s chat is moving to its new-generation GPT-6, along with a new feature called Intelligent UI. Answers can include charts, tappable buttons, forms, and small tools built on the spot and ready to use, such as a calculator for seeing how much your savings could grow.

OpenAI gave a few examples: if you’re cooking a Sunday roast, the timing can sit right alongside the recipe, and on a road trip, the stops can appear on a map, with notes on which ones are worth a detour. GPT-6 decides for itself how to present the answer, depending on the question. A comparison might work best side by side, and when the question is simple, it can still answer in plain text.

The rollout is happening gradually around the world: it began with most paid plans on 7 October, and from 8 October free users and the lower-cost paid plan started getting it too. By OpenAI’s own count, more than 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT every week.

Why it matters to you

These examples look like small everyday tasks, but planning a trip and comparing options are exactly what customers do before deciding which business to go to.

Say you run a factory in Changhua that’s open to visitors. A couple open ChatGPT and ask: “We’re driving from Taipei to Taichung and Changhua for the weekend with two kids. Plan us a two-day trip.” Before, ChatGPT would mostly reply with a paragraph listing a few attractions, and they’d probably search around and compare a bit more on their own. With Intelligent UI, the answer could simply be a map, with the stops for both days marked on it and notes on which ones are worth a detour. If your factory is on that map, with a note saying kids can make things themselves, the family may well slot you into the second afternoon. If you’re not on the map, you’re not part of their weekend.

The same goes for businesses outside tourism. “Which hotpot restaurants in Taichung are good for a family dinner?” and “Which dentist in Kaohsiung is most patient with children?” both ask ChatGPT to compare, and the answer may set a few places side by side; then whether you made the cut, and how you’re described, is right there for the customer to see.

Our guess is that the more an answer looks like a ready-made itinerary or a finished comparison, the more likely customers are to follow it rather than search and compare places one by one themselves.

OpenAI says GPT-6 is better at knowing when to look things up, and for questions like planning a trip or comparing businesses, it will most likely look online before deciding which places go on the map or into the comparison. It will quite likely describe you much the way the web does; the line ChatGPT writes about you may be the first impression customers get of you.

What to do about it

We’d suggest getting ready now. Paid and free plans alike are on the rollout list this time.

Get these facts in order first: where you are, when you’re open, who you’re a good fit for, whether people need to book first. Your website, your Google Maps business listing and your Facebook page should all carry the same version, so that when ChatGPT looks you up and writes its answer, it stands a better chance of getting clear, correct material.

Even with all that in order, ChatGPT can still get you wrong. A small note next to a map probably can’t hold much, so it will quite likely pick just a few lines, and without their context, the meaning can shift. Say you’ve written “closed Sunday afternoons” and it gets shortened to “closed Sundays”: customers will think you’re shut all day.

You can open ChatGPT yourself and see how it describes you. When it answers after searching the web, it may list the sites it drew on; but this announcement doesn’t explain how sources will be shown on these new answers. So when something is wrong, you may not be able to tell which website or which sentence it came from. Getting it to say the right thing will mostly mean working through your own website and the places other people write about you (bloggers’ posts, write-ups on travel sites), one by one.

Our managed service (managed GEO) works like this: our team fixes your site’s content, brings what’s said about you elsewhere into line, and regularly checks how each AI engine describes you. You just review the results.

If you want to know whether ChatGPT puts you into your customers’ itineraries and comparisons right now, talk to one of our consultants about a demo, a session where they show you live. The consultant asks ChatGPT to plan a trip or compare a few businesses like yours, putting in only what the customer needs and leaving your name out, to see whether you made the cut and how you’re described; if the answer has buttons or options, they’ll tap through them with you and try again with different conditions. The new answers are rolling out gradually, so on the day it may still reply with a paragraph, which still shows how it talks about you.

The same session also looks at your own website. geoweb.tw has a free website audit (the GEO audit) that checks how well AI can understand your site and scores it across 12 areas, and the consultant will go through your site’s score with you.

Further reading