OpenAI is seeking to muscle in on Google’s search engine dominance by forcing it to offer ChatGPT as an alternative on Android phones and its web browser.
The artificial intelligence company has asked British regulators to make Google offer ChatGPT as an alternative search engine.
Under measures proposed by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to open up the search market, Google will have to offer users of its Chrome web browser and Android mobile operating system a “choice screen” in which they can select a different search engine as their default.
While the alternatives are typically traditional search engines such as Microsoft’s Bing, OpenAI has argued that it should also be seen as an option.
“Like search engines, some chatbots enable broad information discovery through conversational or multimodal responses. And consumers increasingly are using these services to conduct a wide range of searches,” the company said in a submission to the CMA.
“OpenAI recommends that the eligibility criteria should explicitly include a clear reference to AI chatbots that include search functionality and competing offerings of a ‘search generative experience.’”
ChatGPT and other AI systems are seen as a threat to Google’s lucrative search business because they allow users to look up information without browsing search results.
Allowing users to replace Google with the AI bot as their default search engine would mark a new challenge to the tech giant.
The filing said that ChatGPT should be seen as an alternative because Google is already integrating AI into its main search product. It has introduced AI features that summarise results in a bot-like format rather than providing links.
ChatGPT launched a search feature in 2024 that lets the bot search the web on users’ behalf. It already lets people set ChatGPT as their default search engine in Chrome, but this requires installing extra software, and the option isn’t offered by Google. There are around 900 million weekly ChatGPT users.
Last year, the CMA ruled that Google had “strategic market status” in search because of its dominance. It suggested introducing choice screens to boost competition.
While the company already offers choice screens on Android in the UK, under the proposals, it would also have to do so on its Chrome browser, as well as showing regular pop-ups offering people the chance to change.
A Google spokesman pointed to a blog post responding to the CMA last week in which the company said “frequent, interruptive pop-ups” would “annoy users”.
The launch of ChatGPT in 2022 forced Google to declare a “code red”, as the company’s search dominance appeared threatened. But the business is more lucrative than ever, with search revenues rising 16pc to $63bn (£47bn) last year. The company’s own Gemini AI systems have grown rapidly, rivalling ChatGPT.