OpenAI announced on Thursday the introduction of SearchGPT, an innovative AI-powered search engine with real-time access to information from the internet. This move positions the Microsoft-backed startup directly against established players like Google, the dominant search engine, as well as newer AI-driven services like Perplexity.
SearchGPT Features and Functionality
SearchGPT is designed to provide timely and accurate answers to user queries by drawing from web sources. The user interface of SearchGPT is reminiscent of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, where users type in a query and receive summarized search results with source links. Users can also ask follow-up questions and explore related searches in a sidebar. Notably, some searches take into account the user’s location to enhance result accuracy, such as showing nearby restaurants or local weather forecasts. Users can manage this location sharing through settings.
Collaboration and Responsible AI Usage
OpenAI has taken a collaborative approach with publishers, offering tools to manage how their content appears in SearchGPT results. The company has formed content licensing agreements with major organizations like the Associated Press, News Corp, and Axel Springer. OpenAI emphasizes the importance of citing and linking to publishers prominently, ensuring clear, in-line attribution to prevent issues of plagiarism and content cannibalism that have plagued other AI search tools.
Market Impact and Future Integration
Following the announcement, shares of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, saw a decline of over 3%, indicating market concern about the potential impact of SearchGPT. While Google did not respond to queries about this development, the competitive landscape is clearly shifting. According to Statcounter, Google’s search market share dropped from 92.6% to 91.1% in the past year, largely due to increased usage of Microsoft Bing, which also leverages OpenAI technology.
SearchGPT is currently in the prototype stage and is being tested with a select group of users and publishers. OpenAI has opened sign-ups for this new tool and plans to integrate the best features of SearchGPT into ChatGPT in the future, although no specific timeline has been provided.
Addressing Challenges and Criticisms
The launch of SearchGPT comes amid growing scrutiny of AI-powered search tools for issues such as plagiarism, inaccuracies, and reduced traffic to original content sites. Noteworthy incidents include Google’s AI suggesting incorrect and potentially harmful actions, and other AI engines like Perplexity failing to properly credit news sources. OpenAI aims to differentiate SearchGPT by ensuring responsible AI deployment and maintaining a thriving ecosystem of publishers and creators. The company has clarified that SearchGPT is separate from the training of OpenAI’s generative AI foundation models and that sites can appear in search results even if they opt out of such training.
