The Language of the Question Selects the Market: Query Language and Exit IP as Separable Factors in Commercial Recommendations from a Generative Search Interface
When a generative search interface answers a commercial question, which market's products it names is decided before the model reasons about the products. We report a controlled probe of 234 runs against the logged-out ChatGPT web interface and the OpenAI API, collected on 29 and 30 August 2026 across four exit countries and six query languages, with six identical runs per cell. Three results. First, the top recommendation is unstable: it changed across six identical runs on four of six prompts, and that rate was identical in the browser interface and in the API with web search both enabled and disabled, so instability is a property of the system and not of the surface. Second, query lang...
| Authors | Dmitrij Żatuchin |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.IR |
| Published | 30 August 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 30 August 2026 |
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