OpenAI releases ChatGPT search engine to compete with Google

OpenAI on Thursday beefed up its generative chatbot ChatGPT with search engine capabilities as the startup takes on Google’s decades-long dominance in web search.

The update allows users to get “fast and timely answers” with links to relevant web sources – information that previously required the use of a traditional search engine, the company said.

A major update to ChatGPT enables an AI-powered chatbot to provide real-time information over the Internet.

ChatGPT’s home page can now also offer live tabs with sources for content on topics ranging from weather forecasts and stock prices to sports scores and breaking news, the company says.

They will be linked to news and data from providers who have signed content agreements with OpenAI, including France’s Le Monde, Germany’s Axel Springer and Britain’s Financial Times.

Examples of the new interface shown on OpenAI’s website closely resembled Google search results and Google Maps, but without the ad clutter.

They also resembled the interface of Perplexity, another AI-powered search engine that offers a more conversational version of Google with sources cited in the answer.

Both OpenAI and Perplexity have faced lawsuits from the New York Times for collecting data or linking to copyrighted content without permission.

Instead of launching a separate product, OpenAI has integrated search directly into ChatGPT for paid subscribers, although this will be extended to users using the free version of the chatbot.

Users can enable the search feature by default or manually activate it using the web search icon.

The company added that any website or publisher can sign up to appear in ChatGPT search results, with OpenAI actively seeking feedback from content creators to further improve the system.

– “Favorite function” –

Since launch, data on AI chatbots such as ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude has been time-limited, so the responses provided were not up to date.

This is seen as a weakness of AI chatbots, especially in OpenAI, which does not have a separate search engine that provides more timely data. In contrast, Google and Microsoft combine AI responses with web results.

For now, this feature will not include ads, allowing ChatGPT to offer much cleaner results than Google.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote on X on Thursday that search is his “favorite feature we’ve launched” on ChatGPT since the bot’s 2022 debut.

“I find this to be a much faster and easier way to get the information I’m looking for,” Altman added on Reddit.

The launch will raise more questions about the startup’s ties to Microsoft, a major OpenAI investor that is also trying to expand the reach of its Bing search engine against Google.

Altman put his company on the path to becoming an Internet giant.

He successfully led the company to a staggering $157 billion valuation in a recent fundraising round that included Microsoft, Tokyo conglomerate SoftBank and AI chip maker Nvidia as investors.

Attracting new users with the power of search engines will increase the company’s computing needs and costs, which are enormous.

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