2025 was a watershed year for AI and local business discovery. From OpenAI's GPT-5 to Google's Gemini 3, the major AI platforms evolved dramatically - and so did how consumers find and choose local businesses.
The Year AI Became the Default Discovery Tool
At the start of 2025, asking AI for local recommendations was still novel. By year's end, it had become second nature for millions of consumers. According to industry estimates, AI-assisted local searches grew by over 300% this year.
This shift was driven by three major developments: more capable AI models, deeper integration into everyday devices, and growing consumer trust in AI recommendations.
OpenAI's GPT-5 Era
OpenAI dominated headlines with the release of GPT-5.2 in December, following GPT-5.1 in November. These models brought unprecedented reasoning capabilities, with GPT-5.2 achieving 55.6% on SWE-Bench Pro - a rigorous real-world software engineering benchmark.
For local businesses, the improved reasoning means ChatGPT now provides more nuanced recommendations. It can weigh factors like business hours, customer reviews, service specialties, and location proximity with human-like judgment.
The new ChatGPT Images feature also means AI can now help users visualize businesses - generating images of what a restaurant might look like or showing product examples from local retailers.
Anthropic's Claude Gains Enterprise Ground
While OpenAI grabbed consumer mindshare, Anthropic's Claude made significant inroads in enterprise applications. Claude Opus 4.5, released in late 2025, became known as the most thoughtful AI assistant - taking time to reason through complex queries.
Anthropic's partnerships tell the story of 2025: a major expansion with Accenture training 30,000 professionals on Claude, and a $200 million strategic partnership with Snowflake giving 12,600 enterprise customers access to Claude.
For businesses, this means Claude is increasingly powering the backend systems that route customer inquiries, handle support, and - importantly - recommend services.
Google's Gemini 3 Integrates with Search
Perhaps the most significant development for local businesses was Google bringing Gemini 3 to AI Mode in Google Search across nearly 120 countries. This integration means that when users ask Google conversational questions about local businesses, they're getting Gemini-powered responses.
The launch of Gemini 3 Flash brought frontier-level performance at faster speeds, achieving 90.4% on PhD-level reasoning benchmarks while remaining accessible in free tiers.
Google also introduced Gemini Agent, which can orchestrate complex multi-step tasks like researching and booking services - a preview of how AI will handle local discovery end-to-end.
What This Means for Your Business in 2026
The 2025 developments point to clear trends for the year ahead:
- AI recommendations are now mainstream - Every major platform is optimizing for conversational, recommendation-style responses
- Multi-platform presence matters - With ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini all recommending businesses differently, you need visibility across all three
- Enterprise AI affects B2B discovery - Claude's enterprise partnerships mean B2B recommendations are increasingly AI-mediated
- Google Search is now AI Search - Traditional SEO and AI visibility are converging as Gemini powers Google
Looking Ahead
2025 was the year AI-assisted discovery went mainstream. 2026 will be the year businesses that ignored this shift start feeling the consequences - and those that adapted reap the rewards.
The businesses thriving in this new landscape are those monitoring their AI visibility across all major platforms, understanding how each AI describes them, and optimizing their digital presence accordingly.