OpenAI Introduces SearchGPT: The AI Assistant That Knows Everything
OpenAI has announced the launch of its new search engine, SearchGPT, which uses artificial intelligence to provide real-time information. Currently, SearchGPT is in early testing and available to a limited number of users. In the future, OpenAI plans to integrate this tool into ChatGPT, significantly expanding its capabilities.
Direct Competition with Google and Bing
With the introduction of SearchGPT, OpenAI is entering direct competition with Google, which has long dominated the online search market but now must adapt to the rapid development of artificial intelligence. The launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 sparked this race. The new tool also poses a threat to Microsoft’s Bing, which already uses OpenAI technologies in its efforts to compete with Google.
How SearchGPT Works
SearchGPT allows users to ask questions in natural language, just like with ChatGPT, and receive up-to-date answers with links to clear and relevant sources. Unlike ChatGPT, which often relies on outdated data, SearchGPT provides real-time information. For example, a demo video shows SearchGPT answering a question about the best tomato varieties to grow in Minnesota, providing links to sites like “The Garden Magazine” and “The Gardening Dad.”
The tool also offers a sidebar with additional links to relevant information, somewhat reminiscent of the traditional “ten blue links” on Google’s search results pages.
Improving Online Search with AI
According to the company’s blog, searching for information online can require significant effort and multiple attempts to get relevant results. Enhancing conversational models with real-time information from the internet will make it faster and easier to find what you need.
The launch of OpenAI’s new search engine could strengthen the position of generative AI—a technology capable of creating original text and other media—as the future of online search. Google and other companies have previously tried to integrate chatbots and AI-generated answers into search engines. However, the future of this technology is not guaranteed, given AI’s tendency to confidently provide false information without indicating possible errors.
Challenges and Publisher Concerns
OpenAI’s new tool comes after Google introduced new AI-generated summaries in May, which were added to some search results pages to give users quick answers without clicking links. However, Google quickly withdrew this feature after it provided false and, in some cases, completely nonsensical information in response to user queries.
Google’s tool also raised concerns among news publishers, who feared that AI summaries could reduce traffic to their sites by eliminating the need to visit pages for information. Similar concerns may arise with OpenAI’s search engine.
However, OpenAI stated that it is working with publishers in developing the tool and gives them options to control how their materials appear in SearchGPT results. Moreover, sites can appear in SearchGPT results even if they have opted out of having their content used to train the company’s AI models.