Starting today, OpenAI’s generative search engine is available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers, Team subscribers, and SearchGPT waitlist members, as announced on October 31. This development could rattle Google Search, as OpenAI aims to attract users away from Google’s platform. They’ve even created a Chrome extension to make ChatGPT the default search engine. This new search capability goes head-to-head with Microsoft’s Bing Chat as well.
OpenAI plans to extend ChatGPT search access to enterprise and education users in the coming weeks, while free tier users will gain access in the months ahead. So, what is ChatGPT search? It’s a generative AI search feature that provides text generated by a large language model and also links to external websites. It operates on an upgraded version of GPT-4o, along with some outputs from OpenAI’s o1-preview. OpenAI had teased this feature under the name SearchGPT back in July.
OpenAI aims to deliver a more effective alternative to its competitors. Unlike Google’s approach of prioritizing “people-first” content, which doesn’t always yield relevant results, ChatGPT search strives to make finding information easier. Users often struggle to locate older content or resources that don’t directly answer their questions. OpenAI wants to change that by allowing users to engage with the AI naturally. “Ask follow-up questions, and ChatGPT will consider the entire context to provide a more precise answer,” OpenAI mentioned.
Accessing ChatGPT search is straightforward with a backslash command, which also shows the functions available in OpenAI’s model. Like Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT search will display sources in a sidebar. The search engine also provides updates on weather, stocks, and sports scores. Right now, OpenAI does not plan to include ads.
In terms of how it addresses news media, OpenAI has partnered with major outlets like the Associated Press and Reuters. According to reports, ChatGPT search will recommend reputable news sources for topics like elections. Non-affiliated sites have the option to control their appearance in search results through their robots.txt file. Some newspapers, like The New York Times, have pursued legal action against OpenAI over copyright issues, while others see the partnership as a smart move in the evolving generative AI landscape. Vox Media president Pam Wasserstein highlighted that ChatGPT search aims to better showcase trustworthy sources, which could benefit both audiences and content producers alike.
