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UK regulator proposes AI assistants like ChatGPT on Google's choice screens, with a prompt every year

Android and Chrome users in the UK would be asked every year which search service they want, and an AI assistant that passes the CMA's tests could be the answer.

By Think Facility · September 23, 2026 · Google AI policy

On September 23, 2026, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority published tougher proposals for the screen that asks Android and Chrome users which search service they want. AI assistants could be on it for the first time.

The CMA names ChatGPT and Perplexity as the kind of service it has in mind. Google would have to show the choice when someone sets up an Android phone or opens Chrome for the first time, and then ask again every year.

Who
Competition and Markets Authority
Applies to
Google Android and Google Chrome customers in the UK
New
AI assistants on the choice screens
Prompt
Every year, to choose the default provider
Views due
9 October
Final decision
By the end of the year

The yearly prompt was the part I didn't expect. When the CMA first put choice screens out for consultation in January, its release talked about making them a legal requirement on Android and bringing them to Chrome. It didn't mention asking again.

Who gets on the screen

A pink granite office facade with rows of green-framed windows, and a window cleaner hanging on a rope near the top left corner
25 Cabot Square in London, the address the CMA lists for general enquiries. Photo: mattbuck ( category ), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

An AI assistant only makes the list if it meets the relevant criteria, which the release says include technical and security requirements. Every provider on the screen would also have to attribute publisher content fairly when it uses it, so people can get to the source and see where a result came from.

Sarah Cardell, the CMA's chief executive, put the change down to how people search now.

We’ve listened carefully to feedback and are responding quickly to the rise of AI assistants, which people are increasingly using as their search service, but aren’t included on Google’s choice screens.

From CMA strengthens proposals allowing people choice over their search service

The press release doesn't spell out the technical and security tests, or say which assistants would pass them today. ChatGPT and Perplexity appear in it as examples of how search is changing.

How this got here

User choice is the last of four Google rules the CMA consulted on in January. The regulator gave Google strategic market status in search in October 2025, and it has already imposed the other three.

  1. four rules go out for consultation
  2. publisher controls imposed
  3. fair ranking and data portability imposed
  4. user choice goes back out, stronger

In January the CMA said Google Search accounts for more than 90% of all general search queries in the UK.

The release quotes nobody from Google (or from OpenAI or Perplexity, the two companies it names). The CMA wants views by 9 October and expects to make its final decision by the end of the year.

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