Airtasker has switched on a full task experience inside ChatGPT, letting customers post a job, choose a Tasker and pay without leaving the chat. It is the first real sign that discovery in Australia is shifting into the assistant. Businesses that live only on their own website should treat the chatbot as a channel they now have to earn a place in.
The Take: Airtasker just made its whole marketplace bookable inside ChatGPT, so a customer can post a job, pick a Tasker and pay without ever opening Airtasker. This is not a marketing gimmick. It is the first real sign that discovery in Australia is moving inside the chatbot, and the businesses that live only on their own website are about to learn how much of their traffic they were renting.
What launched: On 13 August Airtasker switched on a full task experience inside ChatGPT, letting a user post a task, browse Tasker profiles and hire someone without leaving the chat. Airtasker also published a setup guide so the same marketplace can be reached from Claude, Cursor and other agents. It is paying to pull people in too, with $50 off a first task over $200 until 13 September.
What Airtasker is paying to move a first booking off its own app and into ChatGPT, on tasks over $200
Who wins: Airtasker wins distribution it does not own. The customer wins a shorter path from problem to hire. The Tasker on the other end wins a lead they never had to chase. The loser is the business that assumed people would keep starting on Google or on a branded app. When the assistant does the finding, a brand that is not in the answer does not get considered.
Second order: Agentic commerce, where the assistant completes the buying rather than just the researching, has been a slide-deck idea for two years. An ASX-listed Australian marketplace putting real bookings through it turns it into a channel. The question stops being whether customers will buy inside AI and becomes whether your business can be surfaced when they do.
For Australian operators: Treat the assistant as a channel you have to earn a place in, the way you once had to earn a Google ranking. Three moves. First, get your services, prices and coverage into clean machine-readable form, because that is what an agent reads before it recommends anyone. Second, ask an assistant to solve a problem in your category and see who it names, because that is your new shelf position. Third, protect the direct relationship you own, your list and your repeat customers, because a platform sitting between you and the chatbot can reprice that access whenever it likes. Discovery moved into the chat. Make sure your business can be found there.