OpenAI unveils SearchGPT, an AI-powered search engine

OpenAI on Thursday announced a new type of AI-powered search engine called SearchGPT. The move marks the company’s entry into a search engine market dominated by Google for decades. On its website, OpenAI described SearchGPT as a “temporary example of new AI search features that provide you with fast and timely answers from clear and relevant sources.” The company plans to test the product with the first 10,000 users and introduce it to ChatGPT after collecting feedback.

The launch of SearchGPT comes amid growing competition in AI-powered search. Google, the world’s leading search engine, has recently begun to integrate AI capabilities into its platform. Other startups like Jeff Bezos-backed Perplexity also aim to take on Google and market themselves as “answer engines” that use AI to summarize the Internet.

The rise of AI-powered search engines has been controversial. Last month, Perplexity faced criticism for summarizing stories from them Forbes again It has strings without adequate explanation or backlinks in the publication and ignoring robots.txt, the websites’ way of telling the hackers to remove the data to reverse. Earlier this week, Wired’s publisher Condé Nast reportedly sent a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity and accused it of plagiarism.

Perhaps because of this tension, OpenAI seems to be taking a collaborative approach with SearchGPT. The company’s blog post emphasizes that the prototype was developed in collaboration with various media organizations and includes quotes from the CEO The Atlantic and News Corp, two of the many publishers OpenAI has struck licensing deals with.

“SearchGPT is designed to help users connect with publishers by prominently citing and linking to them in search,” says the company’s blog. “Answers have a clear, in-line description, with name and links so users know where the information came from and can quickly engage with additional results in a sidebar with source links.” OpenAI also noted that publishers will have control over how their content is presented in SearchGPT and can opt out of having their content used to train OpenAI models while appearing in search results.

The SearchGPT interface has a prominent text box that asks users, “What are you searching for?” Unlike traditional search engines like Google that provide a list of links, SearchGPT breaks down results with short descriptions and visuals.

For example, when searching for information about music festivals, the engine provides brief descriptions of the events and links to more information. Some users have pointed out, however, that the search engine is already presenting incorrect information in its results.

We repeat: Please do not get your news from AI chatbots.