OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, has unveiled its new search engine, SearchGPT. Unlike traditional search engines, SearchGPT aims to understand your query and provide summarized answers with links to sources.
It’s still in the early stages, with limited access for testing. OpenAI plans to eventually incorporate SearchGPT’s features into ChatGPT.
Essentially, SearchGPT is designed to give you more than just a list of links; it aims to process information and present it in a user-friendly way.
OpenAI spokesperson Kayla Wood tells The Verge. Wood says that OpenAI is working with third-party partners and using direct content feeds to build its search results. The goal is to eventually integrate the search features directly into ChatGPT.
It’s the start of what could become a meaningful threat to Google, which has rushed to bake in AI features across its search engine, fearing that users will flock to competing products that offer the tools first. It also puts OpenAI in more direct competition with the startup Perplexity, which bills itself as an AI “answer” engine. Perplexity has recently come under criticism for an AI summaries feature that publishers claimed was directly ripping off their work.
OpenAI seems to have taken note of the blowback and says it’s taking a markedly different approach. In a blog post, the company emphasized that SearchGPT was developed in collaboration with various news partners, which include organizations like the owners of The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, and Vox Media, the parent company of The Verge. “News partners gave valuable feedback, and we continue to seek their input,” Wood says.
