What began as a simple ChatGPT search has turned into a new Manitoba company.

Alex Varricchio and Kiirsten May started peppering online chatbots with questions: What is UpHouse? What’s it about? They knew — they co-founded the creative agency in 2017 — but they wanted to see how the business would come across.

“We’re sort of in an age of the new internet,” Varricchio said.

Use of platforms like ChatGPT as a search engine has skyrocketed. Sixty per cent of Americans seek information using AI, an Associated Press–NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found earlier this year.

Varricchio and May wanted to get their brand right — and noticed — on the platforms.

“(We) started to realize fairly quickly that if we were looking at this, that a lot of other businesses would be looking,”

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