The highly anticipated launch of SearchGPT, an AI-powered search engine that provides real-time access to information on the internet, by OpenAI is being made public.
“What are you looking for?” appears in a huge text box at the top of the search engine. However, SearchGPT attempts to arrange and make sense of the links rather than just providing a bare list of them. In one instance from OpenAI, the search engine provides a synopsis of its discoveries regarding music festivals, accompanied by succinct summaries of the events and an attribution link.
Another example describes when to plant tomatoes before decomposing them into their individual types. You can click the sidebar to access more pertinent resources or pose follow-up questions once the results are displayed.
At present, SearchGPT is merely a “prototype.” According to OpenAI spokesman Kayla Wood, the service, which is powered by the GPT-4 family of models, will initially only be available to 10,000 test users. According to Wood, OpenAI uses direct content feeds and collaborates with outside partners to provide its search results. Eventually, the search functions should be integrated right into ChatGPT.
It’s the beginning of what may grow to be a significant challenge to Google, which has hurriedly integrated AI capabilities into its search engine out of concern that customers might swarm to rival firms that provide the tools first. Additionally, it places OpenAI more squarely against Perplexity, a business that markets itself as an AI “answer” engine. Publishers have recently accused Perplexity of outright copying their work through an AI summary tool.
OpenAI claims to be adopting a notably different strategy, suggesting that it has noticed the backlash. The business highlighted in a blog post that SearchGPT was created in cooperation with a number of news partners, including businesses such as Vox Media, the parent company of The Verge, and the owners of The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press. “News partners gave valuable feedback, and we continue to seek their input,” says Wood.
According to the business, publishers would be able to “manage how they appear in OpenAI search features.” They still appear in search results, even if they choose not to have their content utilized to train OpenAI’s algorithms.
According to OpenAI’s blog post, “SearchGPT is designed to help users connect with publishers by prominently citing and linking to them in searches.” “Responses have clear, in-line, named attribution and links so users know where information is coming from and can quickly engage with even more results in a sidebar with source links.”
OpenAI gains from releasing its search engine in prototype form in several ways. Additionally, it’s possible to miscredit sources or even plagiarize entire articles, as Perplexity was said to have done.
There have been rumblings about this new product for several months now; in February, The Information reported on its development, and in May, Bloomberg reported even more. A new website that OpenAI has been developing that made reference to the transfer was also seen by certain X users.
ChatGPT has been gradually getting closer to the real-time web, thanks to OpenAI. The AI model was months old when GPT-3.5 was released. OpenAI introduced Browse with Bing, a method of internet browsing for ChatGPT, last September; yet, it seems far less sophisticated than SearchGPT.
OpenAI’s quick progress has brought millions of users to ChatGPT, but the company’s expenses are mounting. According to a story published in The Information this week, OpenAI’s expenses for AI training and inference might total $7 billion this year. Compute costs will also increase due to the millions of people using ChatGPT’s free edition. When SearchGPT first launches, it will be available for free. However, as of right now, it doesn’t seem to have any advertisements, so the company will need to find a way to make money soon.