OpenAI launches ChatGPT Search, a direct competitor of Google

ChatGPT Plus subscribers, team subscribers and SearchGPT waitlist members can use OpenAI’s generative search engine starting today, the AI ​​giant announced on October 31.

That could be a Halloween scare for Google Search, as OpenAI is directly aimed at pulling users away from Google’s algorithm. OpenAI has created a Chrome extension to set ChatGPT search as the browser’s default search engine. ChatGPT search also competes with Microsoft’s Bing Chat in the Bing search engine.

ChatGPT search will become accessible to business and education users “in the coming weeks.” OpenAI said in a blog post. Free tier users will see the new functionality “in the coming months.”

What is ChatGPT Search?

OpenAI’s ChatGPT search is a generative AI search that returns text written by a large language model and links to external websites. It runs on a refined version of GPT-4o in combination with some OpenAI o1 preview results.

OpenAI first introduced ChatGPT search as SearchGPT in a preview in July.

OpenAI wants to offer a ‘better answer’ than its competitors

Google Search ranks results based on their initiatives put forward “people first” content. However, the results are not always relevant or useful. In recent years, it has become more difficult to find older content or content that is not intended to directly answer a question.

OpenAI aims to eliminate “link searching” by using the context of the natural-sounding conversations a ChatGPT user can have with the AI.

“Go deeper with follow-up questions, and ChatGPT will consider the full context of your chat to get a better answer for you,” OpenAI wrote.

Like Google’s AI Summaries, ChatGPT Search shows sources for its information in a sidebar in the right column.

ChatGPT search provides weather, stock and sports results. OpenAI currently has no plans to include ads.

SEE: Google has opened it AI Search Assistant Overviews to more countries at the end of October.

The use of news media in AI search results is controversial

OpenAI collaborated with news media including Associated Press, Reuters, The Atlantic and Time. According to the WashingtonPostChatGPT search will lead election-related questions to renowned news sites such as Associated Press and Reuters.

Non-affiliated sites can control whether or not they appear in ChatGPT search results by allowing or denying OpenAI’s OAI-SearchBot in their robots.txt file.

Some newspapers, including The New York Times, have done so indicted OpenAI for copyright infringement of their content. Meanwhile, other media groups see an alliance with OpenAI as a valuable business strategy in an era of growing generative AI.

“ChatGPT search promises to better highlight and attribute information from trusted news sources, benefiting audiences while expanding the reach of publishers like us who produce premium journalism,” said Vox Media president Pam Wasserstein in OpenAI’s blog post.