Week of July 20–27, 2026
Four things moved in AI this week that touch how Alaska businesses train staff, show up in search, and stay safe on the phone. Here’s what changed and what to do about it.
OpenAI launched a free program to get small businesses actually using AI
On July 21, OpenAI launched its ChatGPT for Small Business program, a mix of free virtual training webinars, in-person AI academies in select U.S. cities, and step-by-step guides built specifically for owners who haven’t used AI in their operations yet. The program runs on GPT-5.6, OpenAI’s newest model, available at every ChatGPT subscription tier, including free.
This directly answers last month’s biggest finding in this digest: a Thryv survey showed 70% of small business owners say they need more training, not more tools, and most are currently learning from YouTube. OpenAI’s program is built to close exactly that gap, with webinars walking through real use cases like budget analysis, marketing drafts, and meeting prep, plus integrations with Shopify and Intuit for businesses already running on those platforms.
Structured AI training rarely reaches Anchorage or the Mat-Su in person, so the free virtual webinar track matters more here than in a city with a dozen local AI meetups. If you've been putting off learning ChatGPT because you didn't know where to start, this is a guided on-ramp instead of another YouTube video.
If the barrier has been "I don't know how to actually use this," OpenAI just built the on-ramp. Sign up for one webinar this month, pick one task from it, and use it on a real job before adding a second tool.
Google now lets you run your Business Profile by talking to Gemini
Google is rolling out a feature that connects your Google Business Profile directly to the Gemini app, turning Gemini into an assistant that can see your reviews, customer questions, call data, and search performance. You can ask it “how did my business do this month” and get a real answer pulled from your actual profile data, or ask it to draft a reply to a specific review in your own voice, or have it update your hours and post a seasonal update without opening the Business Profile dashboard at all.
Google is also introducing “Notebooks,” a workspace inside Gemini for organizing business chats, sources, and profile data in one place. The features started rolling out globally this month, outside the EEA and UK, with the direct Business Profile connection following in the coming weeks.
A one-person or family-run shop in Alaska usually doesn't have someone dedicated to managing a Business Profile. Being able to say "draft a reply to my last review" or "post that we're closed for the holiday" in a chat window, instead of hunting through a dashboard, removes a real reason profiles sit stale for months.
When the connection option appears on your profile, turn it on. It doesn't cost anything, and a profile that gets updated and responded to consistently is exactly what Google already rewards in local rankings.
AI Overviews now answer 68% of local searches, before the map results ever load
New research covered by Search Engine Journal found that Google’s AI Overviews now appear on 68% of local business searches, compared to 39% for the traditional local map pack. That’s a 29-point gap: a customer can get a full AI-written answer about “best plumber near me” before ever scrolling down to the map results your business has spent years trying to rank in.
The research also breaks down where this hits hardest. AI Overviews show up for just 15% of simple, direct local searches, like someone searching your business name. But they show up for 92% of informational searches and 97% of hybrid searches, meaning any query that includes a question, a comparison, or “best” or “near me” phrasing is now more likely to get an AI-written summary than a map listing.
A business can rank first in the Anchorage map pack and still be invisible in the AI answer that shows up above it. The businesses AI Overviews cite tend to have clear, structured information about what they do and where, not just a well-optimized listing.
Ranking well in the map pack is no longer the finish line. Make sure your website clearly states what services you offer, where you serve, and answers the obvious questions a customer would ask, in plain text a search engine can read, not just as an image or a PDF.
The BBB is warning about AI voice-cloning scams targeting businesses
The Better Business Bureau issued a scam alert this month about the rise of AI voice-cloning fraud. Scammers only need a few seconds of someone’s voice, pulled from a social media video, a podcast, or a recorded call, to generate a convincing clone. They then call a business claiming to be a vendor, a family member of the owner, or a coworker, and push for an urgent payment or a wire transfer.
The FBI reported Americans lost more than $893 million to AI-related scams last year, and the BBB notes that roughly 60% of fraud against small and medium-sized businesses goes unreported, so the real number is almost certainly higher. The scam works because it relies on urgency and a familiar-sounding voice, not because the technology is hard to fake anymore.
A small crew or office in Alaska often has one or two people who can authorize a payment, which is exactly the setup this scam is built to exploit. If a call comes in demanding a rushed wire transfer or a gift card purchase, that pressure is the tell, regardless of how real the voice sounds.
Put a simple rule in place now: any request for a wire transfer, gift cards, or an urgent payment gets confirmed through a second channel, a text to the person's known number or a callback, before anyone acts on it. That one habit defeats the scam regardless of how convincing the voice gets.
What we're watching next week
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OpenAI’s small business webinars. We’re watching whether the training program actually reaches operators outside major metros, or whether it stays concentrated in the cities hosting in-person academies.
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Gemini’s Business Profile rollout. The direct profile connection is still expanding. We’ll report once it’s live for Alaska-based profiles and what it actually changes day to day.
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AI Overview citations. We’re tracking which kinds of local business pages actually get cited in AI Overviews, so we can pass along what’s working instead of general advice.