What is ChatGPT, and do customers use it to find businesses?
ChatGPT is an AI assistant from OpenAI that you talk to in plain language. OpenAI’s user guide says it “can gather context, take action, and produce something useful”. In Pew Research Center’s February 2026 survey, 44% of U.S. adults said they ever use it, far more than any other chatbot in Pew’s chart. Nothing cited here measures how many people use it to find a business, so ask your own customers.
What OpenAI says ChatGPT is
OpenAI’s ChatGPT user documentation describes ChatGPT in terms of getting things done. Its overview says ChatGPT “can gather context, take action, and produce something useful”. The documentation home page describes Chat as a way to “ask questions, think through possibilities” in conversation, and ChatGPT Work as a way to turn a goal, files and context into documents, spreadsheets and presentations. It also describes Codex, which is for working with code.
The documentation lists separate pages for ChatGPT on the web, a desktop app and a mobile app.
Can it look things up?
Yes, when its web search is on. The related answer on where ChatGPT gets its information covers how that search works and what it means for the pages that describe your business.
Do customers use it to find businesses?
Pew Research Center surveyed 5,119 U.S. adults from February 17 to 23, 2026. Of them, 44% said they ever use ChatGPT, and Pew wrote that “ChatGPT still dominates and its reach is growing”.
Pew’s chart also lists “To search for information” at 42% among the uses of chatbots, and its text says about four-in-ten U.S. adults use chatbots for information searching. That counts any kind of information, not only finding a business, and nothing cited here measures how many people use ChatGPT to find one.
Where to start
Pew’s figures cover adults of every kind, and the share among your own customers may be different. As general advice, ask every new inquiry how they found you, and write down “AI answer” when an assistant was involved.
What an owner can do about how ChatGPT describes a business is in the related answer on getting ChatGPT to recommend your business. To see what it says today, ask it the questions your customers ask, as the related answer on checking what AI says about your business describes, and repeat the check each month. No one can promise that ChatGPT will recommend a particular business.
Sources
- OpenAI, ChatGPT Learn, “Overview”
- OpenAI, ChatGPT Learn, home page
- OpenAI, ChatGPT Learn, “Web search”
- Pew Research Center, “Americans and AI 2026: Chatbots, Smart Devices and Views on Impact” (June 17, 2026)
Related answers
- Where does ChatGPT get its information about a business?
- How do I get ChatGPT to recommend my business?
- How do you check what ChatGPT says about your business?
- What is ChatGPT for business (Business and Enterprise plans)?
- What is Grok, and do customers use it to find businesses?
- What is Apple Intelligence, and does Siri use ChatGPT?
GEO: recommended in AI answers
When a customer asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Claude or Google's AI who to call, the answer names a few businesses. GEO is the work of making yours one of them.