UK CMA wants AI assistants on Google's choice screens

A regulator is about to redraw the default surface where UK customers start looking for things. On September 23, the Competition and Markets Authority published strengthened proposals requiring Google to show Android and Chrome users a choice of search services — and, for the first time, to include AI assistants like ChatGPT and Perplexity on those screens. If you have spent the last year tuning for Google, note that the surface itself is now a policy variable.

What actually happened

Google was designated with strategic market status in general search in October 2025, which is what gives the CMA the power to impose conduct requirements. This is the updated version of the user-choice requirement.

The proposals would require Google to:

• Present a choice of search services when a user first sets up an Android phone or first opens Chrome
• Prompt again annually to confirm or change the default search provider
• Include AI assistants on those screens where they meet the relevant technical and security criteria
• Ensure any provider featured on a choice screen fairly attributes publisher content

Sarah Cardell, the CMA's chief executive, framed it plainly: "The way people search for information online is changing, with new services creating fresh opportunities for innovation and competition."

The consultation closes 9 October 2026, with a final decision expected by the end of the year. This follows earlier interventions in the same case, including the June 2026 publisher controls over AI features in search results.

Why the AI assistant choice screen matters for your business

The UK is not your whole market. The pattern is the point.

Defaults are the distribution. Every serious study of choice screens says the same thing: most people take the default, but the minority who switch is large enough to move real share. Layer an annual re-prompt on top and you get a slow, compounding redistribution of where search sessions start. If a meaningful slice of your traffic originates on a mobile default you never thought about, that slice is now in play — and not because of anything you did to your site.

Plan for multi-surface presence, not multi-engine SEO. The practical work is not "optimize for ChatGPT." It is making sure your business facts are machine-readable and consistent wherever an assistant looks: structured data on your own pages, accurate listings, a crawlable product and pricing surface that doesn't require JavaScript to render. An assistant that can't parse you cannot recommend you, and unlike a search engine it will not show you a ranking to argue with.

The attribution clause is the one small businesses should read twice. A requirement that choice-screen providers fairly attribute publisher content is an admission that the content-to-traffic contract is broken. If you publish to earn visits, model the world where the answer is delivered and the click is not. That changes what you publish — fewer explainers a model can summarize away, more of the things only you have: your prices, your inventory, your booking slots, your actual local availability.

Honest limits: these are proposals in consultation, not rules. Google has contested earlier parts of this case, the criteria that qualify an AI assistant for a choice screen are not yet published, and a final decision is still months out. Nothing here changes your traffic this quarter. It changes what you should be building toward.

Sources: CMA (GOV.UK), Reuters.