OpenAI to launch ‘SearchGPT’ in challenge to Google

Source: The Guardian

OpenAI said SearchGPT is a temporary prototype that will combine the company’s AI models, such as ChatGPT, with the ability to search the internet. It will respond conversationally to searches, while providing up-to-date information with “clear links to relevant sources”.

The search feature positions the company as a direct competitor to major search engines, most notably Google but also Bing, a product of OpenAI’s biggest investor Microsoft.

Integrating generative AI into search engines has become something of an arms race among tech companies, even as AI has a track record of producing inaccurate results and posing copyright concerns.

“Getting answers on the web can take a lot of effort, often requiring multiple attempts to get relevant results,” OpenAI said in a blogpost which hailed “a new way” to search. “We believe that by enhancing the conversational capabilities of our models with real-time information from the web, finding what you’re looking for can be faster and easier.”

Depending on how SearchGPT presents and cites the sources of its information, it risks intensifying a pushback from publishers on how OpenAI uses their content.

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