OpenAI releases ChatGPT search engine, taking on Google

SAN FRANCISCO - OpenAI on Oct 31 beefed up its ChatGPT generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot with search engine capabilities, as the start-up takes on Google’s decades-long dominance of web search.

The upgrade enables users to receive “fast, timely answers” with links to relevant web sources – information that previously required using a traditional search engine, the company said.

The significant upgrade to ChatGPT enables the AI chatbot to provide real-time information from across the web.

ChatGPT’s homepage can now also offer direct tabs to sourced material on topics ranging from weather forecasts and stock prices to sports scores and breaking news, the company said.

These would link to news and data from providers that have signed content deals with OpenAI, including France’s Le Monde, Germany’s Axel Springer and Britain’s Financial Times.

Examples of the new interface shown on the OpenAI website closely resembled search results on Google and Google Maps, though without the clutter of advertising.

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

Both OpenAI and Perplexity are facing lawsuits from The New York Times for scraping or linking to copyrighted content without permission.

Rather than launching a separate product, OpenAI has integrated search directly into ChatGPT for paying subscribers, though this will be expanded to users that use the free version of the chatbot.

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

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

‘Favourite feature’

Since their launch, data on AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude have been limited by time cut-offs, so the answers provided were not up to date.

This has been seen as a weakness of AI chatbots, especially at OpenAI, which does not have a stand-alone search engine providing more timely data.

In contrast, Google and Microsoft both combine AI answers with web results.

For now, the feature would not include advertising, allowing ChatGPT to offer much cleaner results than Google.

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman wrote on Oct 31 on X that search is his “favourite feature we have launched” on ChatGPT since the bot’s debut in 2022.

“I find it to be a way faster/easier way to get the information I’m looking for,” Mr Altman added on Reddit.

The launch will raise more questions about the start-up’s link to Microsoft, a major OpenAI investor, which is also trying to expand the reach of its Bing search engine against Google.

Mr Altman has set his company on a path to become an internet powerhouse.

He successfully catapulted the company to a staggering US$157 billion (S$208 billion) valuation in a recent round of fund raising that included Microsoft, Tokyo-based conglomerate SoftBank and AI chipmaker Nvidia as investors.

Enticing new users with search engine capabilities will increase the company’s computing needs and costs, which are enormous. AFP