OpenAI now lets businesses claim a profile inside ChatGPT. The features got the coverage. The terms you accept to use them got almost none.
On 10 November, OpenAI opened Businesses in ChatGPT in beta. If you've ever set up a Google business profile, the idea will feel familiar. You claim your business and prove it's yours. Then you can fix the details and see how often ChatGPT brings you up. OpenAI says 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT every week, so a lot of business owners will be tempted to claim theirs this month.
Most of the coverage has been about the features. I wanted to know what you actually agree to when you click accept, so I read the Businesses in ChatGPT Terms, last updated on 9 November 2026, alongside OpenAI's setup guide.
This is what's in them, in plain English, with the section numbers so you can check every point yourself. I'm not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice. It's one careful reading by someone who runs a business too.
You claim your business in Business Hub, which sits in the ChatGPT sidebar. You search for your business, pick the matching listing and prove it's yours with a code sent to your business phone or email, a TXT record on your domain, or your Shopify login. Then comes an ID check through Persona, which can ask for a government ID and your business registration. Only after that can you publish changes, connect a product feed or see your numbers. The blue check on your profile shows up at that point too.
Once you're in, you can change your website, description, category, logo, and your delivery and return policies. If you sell products, you can connect a feed with prices and stock, either as a CSV file or straight from Shopify.
The numbers cover the last 28 days: mentions, website clicks and "discovery topics", which are the themes of the answers you appeared in. One detail is easy to miss. For an online business, a mention only counts when ChatGPT references your website, so your brand name on its own doesn't count. You never see the questions people asked.
There's also a Business Agent, a chat with your business that lives inside ChatGPT. It answers questions about your products and policies and links to your site. It can't take orders, make bookings or look up a customer's order. You can also sponsor it as the destination for ChatGPT ads, and those placements are labelled.
Where it works is the part most people outside the US will care about. For now it's mostly a US product. The agents are only for US online stores and online services. Local shops and restaurants can only claim an existing US listing. An online business elsewhere can claim, but only where ChatGPT is available and OpenAI can verify it. And you need a website to claim at all.
OpenAI can show a listing for your business, built from information it already has, "regardless of whether you claim, manage, or cease managing it." Not claiming doesn't keep you out of ChatGPT, and claiming and then walking away doesn't take you out either.
Claiming doesn't give you exclusive control over what your listing says. OpenAI can still change it using other sources, and it can decline to show what you submit. It doesn't promise to verify you either. The setup guide says the same thing in softer words: updates take time to appear, and ChatGPT may use other sources when it answers questions about you.
Your business name, address, contact details, category, opening hours and website, once you submit them for public display, are licensed to OpenAI perpetually and irrevocably. For most businesses that's low cost, since those details are public already. It does mean you can't take them back later.
By using Business Hub, you agree that OpenAI's AI assistant may call you on behalf of its users. OpenAI's opt-out page explains what that looks like: ChatGPT calling a business to ask about opening hours or to make a reservation. You can stop the calls by entering your business number there. If one person answers your phone and they're already busy, it's worth deciding now.
To upload a product feed, you agree to let OpenAI's crawlers and agents into your website, following OpenAI's documentation. You also agree that any text and data mining opt-out you've set doesn't apply to OpenAI. If you blocked OpenAI's crawlers on purpose, or reserved your content against AI training, adding a feed means agreeing to drop that for OpenAI. OpenAI can also decline or remove feed content whenever it decides to. The claim and the feed are separate steps, and you don't need a feed to claim.
OpenAI can create and configure a Business Agent for your business before you opt in. It only goes live if you choose to publish it. If you do publish it, you're responsible for what it says, including answers you never reviewed or approved. OpenAI can change or remove it at any time without notice, and the terms say plainly that it may give inaccurate answers. Section 9 adds that you cover OpenAI's costs if someone brings a claim over your listing or your agent.
The insights count as OpenAI's confidential information. You can use them to measure and improve how you show up, and you can share them with service providers working for you. Unless OpenAI agrees in writing, you can't disclose them otherwise. Read literally, that rules out posting a screenshot of your mention count on LinkedIn, which is exactly what a lot of people will want to do in the next few weeks.
There's no guarantee that you'll show up more or sell more, and using the tools doesn't earn you better treatment anywhere else in OpenAI's products. The setup guide agrees: claiming doesn't guarantee that ChatGPT will recommend you more often, and ads don't change ChatGPT's own answers.
Section 10 is a promise not to sue OpenAI, plus a release of claims, over three kinds of things:
The only exception is a claim that OpenAI broke these terms.
The release also covers claims you don't know about yet, and it waives California Civil Code section 1542, the rule that normally keeps a release from covering unknown claims. Section 10.3 adds that ending the agreement later doesn't oblige OpenAI to delete or stop offering anything your data has already gone into.
In practice, if content from your website has been used to train or improve OpenAI's models, claiming your profile includes promising never to bring a claim over that. For a plumber or a dentist, that may never matter. For anyone whose content is the product, like a publisher or a photographer, it's a real trade, and it's the clause I'd want a lawyer to read before I clicked.
For most small businesses with a website and nothing unusual to protect in their content, I think the trade is probably worth it. The listing can exist either way, and a wrong phone number or out-of-date hours will cost you more than a clause you'll never use. If your content is what you sell, or you opted out of AI training on purpose, slow down and get advice first. Either way, a few things are worth doing before you click accept:
Setting up the profile takes an afternoon. Reading the terms takes less. Do that part first.