Travellers requesting a Bolt ride will now be able to do so through ChatGPT.
The shared mobility giant has announced a global integration of its ride-hailing service into the world’s most used AI assistant, letting ChatGPT’s 900 million weekly users request a Bolt ride mid-conversation.
Bolt launches the integration across all of its global markets at once. Currently, riders can view upfront price estimates for their journey, weigh up route options, check when their driver will arrive and communicate on pickup points. They can’t yet, however, pay for the ride through ChatGPT, with the AI assistant instead redirecting them back to the Bolt app for final payment.
“The details themselves are the same – upfront price, driver ETA, pickup point,” Kimberly Hurd, Bolt’s Senior General Manager for the UK and Ireland, told Zag Daily.
“People are increasingly organising their lives through a conversation with AI and travel is no different. Bolt is making that easier and more seamless by being the first to launch inside ChatGPT across Europe.”
Hurd said that the operator is working towards integrating payments directly into ChatGPT, with this feature planned for later this year.
The integration works through a plugin. ChatGPT users need to connect Bolt manually through the AI assistant’s app store. When asked if Bolt is eyeing similar integrations with other AI assistants like Claude or Fin, Hurd said there are “no plans” at this stage.
“The focus right now is on making the ChatGPT integration as seamless as possible across all our markets,” Hurd added.
The integration comes as travellers increasingly turn to AI to plan their journeys. According to Accenture research which surveyed more than 18,000 consumers across 14 countries, 80% of travellers globally said they use AI tools for travel purposes, with more than half willing to let AI fully manage travel arrangements.
Bolt is positioning the mobility-AI integration as the first of its kind in the EU, UK, Switzerland, Norway, Ukraine and Azerbaijan. Rival operator Uber doesn’t have this kind of integration in place with ChatGPT.
As AI assistants become a fixture in everyday lives, the integration raises the question of whether platforms like ChatGPT could become the new Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) platform with other operators following suit. The test, however, will be if requiring a manual plugin connection from users acts as a barrier to use for city-goers constantly on the move.
