The apps intermediate on ChatGPT
I first titled this edition “Platforms gonna platform," and that's true, too.
ChatGPT might soon defer to third-party apps for food ordering and restaurant reservations in AI-powered chat sessions. OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, unveiled platform plans that include top delivery and reservations apps. Meanwhile, those same apps have been busy spreading marketplace access across the internet to capture evolving diner demand. OpenAI is now the most valuable privately held company in the world, worth $500 billion.
During a Monday event in San Francisco, OpenAI execs explained the next phase of ChatGPT’s evolution, and it’s taking some popular restaurant tech companies along for the ride.
The “biggest news” from the day, per newly independent tech journalist Alex Heath, is OpenAI’s plan to surface third-party apps directly in ChatGPT conversations. It’ll soon integrate restaurant delivery apps DoorDash and Uber Eats, plus reservations app OpenTable, letting diners searching for local delivery or table bookings to use ChatGPT to find, order from, and book restaurants without leaving the chat.
“The vision is clear,” Heath writes, “if ChatGPT gets its way, the digital economy will exist entirely downstream of it.”
And restaurants, already resigned to working with a host of tech intermediaries, could get one more step removed from their customers.
Restaurants are already scrambling to understand how they’ll be discovered and represented in conversational AI tools like ChatGPT.
How that’ll net out is still unclear, though we’ve already seen what can happen when the AI gets it wrong. What’s more clear is that people — diners, customers, users — really like ChatGPT. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that some 800 million people use ChatGPT every week, a figure that’s up by more than 100 million from August.
I (briefly) believed that AI-powered searches and agents could boost a restaurant’s direct connection with its diners. Want local pizza delivery? Ask ChatGPT, and maybe it’ll place an order directly with a restaurant. Who needs to route that request through a marketplace?
Turns out that might be in OpenAI’s best interest.