OpenAI’s big Google Search rival could launch within days to kick off a new era for search
When OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022, alarm bells rang at Google headquarters about what OpenAI’s artificial intelligence (AI) tool could mean for Google’s lucrative search business. Now those fears appear to be coming true, as OpenAI is set to make a surprise announcement next week that could rock the search world forever.
According to ReutersOpenAI plans to launch a Google search competitor that would be powered by its Large Language Model (LLM) technology. The big scoop here is the date OpenAI has apparently set for the reveal: Monday, May 13.
Intriguingly, that’s just one day before the massive Google I/O 2024 show, which is usually one of the biggest Google events of the year. Google often uses the event to promote the latest developments in search and AI, so it will have little time to respond to what OpenAI decides to reveal the day before.
The timing suggests that OpenAI is really looking to take Google’s crown and surpass the search giant on its home turf. The stakes could therefore not be higher for both companies.
OpenAI vs Google
We’ve heard rumors before that OpenAI has an AI-based search engine in store. Bloomberg, for example recently reported that OpenAI’s search engine can pull data from the Internet and include quotes in the results. News channel The Information, meanwhile, has made similar claims that OpenAI is “developing a web search product”, and there has been a near-constant stream of whispers about this for months.
But even without the immediate leaks and rumors, it’s been clear for some time that tools like ChatGPT provide an alternative way to obtain information to more traditional search engines. You can ask ChatGPT to retrieve information on virtually any topic you can think of and the answers will appear in seconds (albeit sometimes with factual inaccuracies). ChatGPT Plus can access information on the web if you’re a paying subscriber, and it looks like this will soon be supplemented with OpenAI’s dedicated search engine.
Of course, Google won’t go down without a fight. The company has released updates to its Gemini chatbot and incorporated several AI features into its existing search engine, including AI-generated answers in a box on the results page.
Whether OpenAI’s search engine will be enough to dethrone Google is anyone’s guess, but it’s clear that the company’s success with ChatGPT has prompted Google to radically rethink its search offering. Next week we may get a clearer picture of what the future of search will look like.