OpenAI introduced a Business Hub on Tuesday that allows companies to create profiles for ChatGPT, adding a feature familiar from consumer search. The profiles give businesses a way to verify and revise information about their products and services. The feature brings OpenAI into territory already occupied by Google and other search engines, where business profiles are an established part of how companies present themselves to people seeking information.

The central change is a channel through which businesses can participate directly in maintaining information about what they offer. OpenAI will require companies to complete a formal verification process, although it has not explained the procedures in detail. That requirement is an important qualification to the launch: creating a business-facing destination and verifying profiles are related tasks, but the safeguards involved remain unspecified.

Benji Shomair, OpenAI’s VP of Monetization, told journalists on Monday that the approach would vary rather than follow a single procedure everywhere. There are “multiple verification methods that we use for different types of business in different markets,” he said. His comments establish that verification methods vary according to the type of business and market involved. They do not, however, spell out what a company will need to provide or how OpenAI will assess it.

Read more: Australia moves towards mandatory AI safeguards after OpenAI breach

The comparison with Google rests on a specific function, rather than evidence that the services are otherwise equivalent. Google and other search engines already offer business profiles, and OpenAI is now adding a similar means of verifying and updating commercial information. For ChatGPT, that offers a potential connection between consumer questions and the businesses those questions may concern. It does not by itself establish how closely the broader experience will resemble a conventional search engine.

For companies, the practical significance lies in having a designated place to maintain information about their own products and services. A profile could make that task more direct than leaving a business without such a channel inside ChatGPT. But the scope of the disclosed feature should not be overstated: the ability to update a profile is not, on its own, evidence of control over how ChatGPT describes a company or responds to a consumer’s query.

For consumers, the potential value is a closer connection between business information and the company responsible for maintaining it. That could matter when someone uses ChatGPT to learn about a product or service. Yet the distinction between verifying a business profile and independently assessing its contents remains important. Even if a process establishes who may manage a profile, it would not necessarily answer every question about the accuracy or completeness of the information that business chooses to provide.

Read more: Google expands AI chip range with two specialized versions

Those considerations create different ways to assess the launch. From a business perspective, direct participation offers a route for keeping product and service information current. From a consumer perspective, the relevant test is whether that participation makes the resulting information more useful and dependable. These interests can align, but they are not identical. The launch provides a mechanism for business participation; the disclosed details do not resolve how users should evaluate business-maintained information within the wider ChatGPT experience.

Verification is therefore more than an administrative detail in assessing the service. Shomair’s description allows for different methods across markets and types of business, without specifying the requirements applicants will face. Such variation could accommodate different circumstances, but the lack of procedural detail limits any assessment of the safeguards. The disclosed information is insufficient to judge how demanding verification will be, or precisely how OpenAI will distinguish among the businesses seeking profiles.

The launch also illustrates the narrower steps through which ChatGPT can become more like a search engine. OpenAI does not need to reproduce every part of a search engine to introduce a familiar business-profile function. Giving companies a formal way to manage profiles is one such step. Its significance lies in providing a place for businesses to maintain information in a service consumers can consult, rather than in demonstrating any particular change in consumer behaviour or competitive position.

The next issue to watch is how OpenAI puts its verification requirements into practice and explains them to participating companies. More detail could clarify the obligations attached to maintaining a profile and the basis on which access is granted. For now, the Business Hub gives companies a designated place to create profiles and update product and service information. Whether that proves useful to consumers remains an open question, not something established simply by adding a feature already familiar from search.