OpenAI officially takes on Google with SearchGPT – but not everyone has access yet
After months of speculation, OpenAI’s search engine, SearchGPT, is here, but only as a prototype and in limited testing. Still, it’s a turning point for the generative AI company and could represent the first substantial challenge to Google’s search engine dominance.
OpenAI has announced that it is testing SearchGPT in a blog post on Thursday. It calls it a “temporary prototype” and is only setting up a waiting list for access. Still, we learn a lot about the kind of results you can expect from SearchGPT.
The main screen starts with an open prompt box pre-populated with the phrase, “What are you looking for?”. SearchGPT accepts natural language queries, similar to Google. However, unlike the world’s most popular search engine, SearchGPT accepts follow-up queries.
An example of this is a search for “Best tomatoes to grow in Minnesota” and the follow-up question “Which of these can I plant now?” OpenAI implies that context is preserved across additional searches, something that is not currently possible with Google or Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
OpenAI’s search engine development is notable given that the first version of its Large Language Model (LLM)-based ChatGPT did not access the web for real-time information. Data training stopped sometime in 2021.
SearchGPT, on the other hand, will, according to OpenAI, “combine the power of our AI models with information from the web to give you fast and timely answers with clear and relevant resources.”
OpenAI makes it clear that SearchGPT will cite its sources and include direct links to them, something that isn’t always clear about what Google’s new Gemini AI-powered search results do. There’s a sense that OpenAI is trying to play the role of a good search engine citizen by promising to help users “discover publishers’ sites and experiences.” Given the number of publishers and content creators currently suing OpenAI Since they would have used their data to train their models, this is a remarkable position to take.
The AI company is already working to find publishing partners such as The Atlantic Ocean.
“AI search is becoming one of the most important ways people navigate the web, and it’s critical, in these early days, that the technology is built in a way that values, respects, and protects journalism and publishers. We look forward to working with OpenAI in this effort to create a new way for readers to discover The Atlantic,” Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, said in the SearchGPT blog post.
OpenAI may want to put an end to the current lawsuits over data scraping by stating that “SearchGPT is about search and is separate from the training of OpenAI’s core generative AI models.” OpenAI also adds that publishers’ results will be included even if they do not agree to OpenAI’s generative training.
SearchGPT also promises more visual search results that don’t look much like the results you’d expect from Google or Bing.
SearchGPT will be a standalone AI search engine, but OpenAI plans to eventually integrate it into ChatGPT, making the platform much more powerful and useful.
The arrival of SearchGPT comes just weeks after Google integrated Gemini Generative Search results at the top of many search results pages as AIO listings. It was a move that was met with some ire from those who rely on Google for fast, no-nonsense results, and from publishers worried about their results and links being pushed further down the page. Google was likely spurred into the AI move in part by Bing, which has achieved first-mover status in the AI search space with generative AI powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT. In some ways, it feels like AI search is coming full circle. The question remains: is this what people want from search?
You can Sign up for the waiting list here (you need a ChatGPT account).