OpenAI announces “SearchGPT” to try and stay at the front of the pack

OpenAI announced a prototype of its new AI-powered search engine, SearchGPT.

SearchGPT aims to provide “fast and timely answers with clear and relevant sources” to transform how we interact with online information.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman expressed confidence in the new product, stating on X, “We think there is room to make search much better than it is today.” 

The company plans to eventually integrate SearchGPT, which is currently being tested with a small group of users, into its ChatGPT itself.

ChatGPT already has Bing integration, but SearchGPT will combine generative AI with the real-time search index for an altogether more complex AI-driven search experience. 

In OpenAI’s words, SearchGPT promises users the ability to “search in a more natural, intuitive way” and ask follow-up questions “just like you would in a conversation.” 

we think there is room to make search much better than it is today.

we are launching a new prototype called SearchGPT: https://t.co/A28Y03X1So

we will learn from the prototype, make it better, and then integrate the tech into ChatGPT to make it real-time and maximally helpful.

— Sam Altman (@sama) July 25, 2024

Perplexity AI is already doing AI search, but was recently embroiled in a controversy for scraping data from websites without their permission. 

Another interesting point is that approximately 15% of leading websites already block OpenAI’s web crawlers, and the pool of information available to AI browsers may be limited, potentially affecting the quality of AI-generated search results. 

So, SearchGPT isn’t guaranteed access to the sites it needs to provide top-quality information. 

It will be interesting to see how OpenAI plans to circumvent this.

We know that the company is hard at work securing partnerships with news companies, which will help inject AI search with up-to-date information without breaking the rules like Perplexity did.

Google takes a hit

Even in its prototype form, SearchGPT impacted Google, with Alphabet shares falling by more than 3% on Thursday to close at $167.28, while the broader Nasdaq index was down less than 1%.

The announcement follows Google’s foray into AI-enhanced search. In May, Google launched AI Overview, which CEO Sundar Pichai called the most notable addition to search in the company’s 25 years-long history. 

However, SGE soon faced criticism after users noticed that queries sometimes returned nonsensical or inaccurate results within the AI feature, with no way to opt-out. 

OpenAI tries to stay top-of-mind

The SearchGPT announcement is part of a broader push by OpenAI to stay at the forefront of the generative AI market. 

Last week, the company launched a new AI model called “GPT-4o mini,” an offshoot of its fastest and most powerful model to date, GPT-4o.

As part of its strategy to bolster its position, OpenAI recently announced the hiring of two top executives: Sarah Friar, previously CEO of Nextdoor and finance chief at Square, joined as chief financial officer, and Kevin Weil, formerly of Planet Labs, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, joined as chief product officer.

Competition in the generative AI market is undoubtedly much more intense than when ChatGPT changed the industry in late 2022.

While ChatGPT is still the most widely used chatbot tool, progress from the open-source brigade of Meta (who recently released Llama 3.1, the world’s largest open weights model), Mistral, and several others, is making it tougher to extract cash from closed-source projects.

SearchGPT is OpenAI’s latest roll of the dice to keep ahead.

After delays in releasing GPT-4o’s much-publicized voice synthesis features, however, the question many are asking about SearchGPT is, when it will actually come out?

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