SearchGPT by OpenAI: The New Era of Search is Here

OpenAI is betting big on the future of online search with its latest tool, SearchGPT. This tool aims to provide fast and timely answers with clear and relevant sources to users’ queries. The tool can challenge Google with its functions, which have dominated the space for over two decades. 

OpenAI launched the test version of SearchGPT. Shockingly, after the tool was launched, shares of Google's parent firm, Alphabet, fell 3%. The shares also dropped 5% on Wednesday, the biggest drop since February. 

SearchGPT works a little differently from Google. It doesn’t provide links related to users’ queries but organises the results to share sensible answers. For instance, if users search for festivals, SearchGPT will summarise its findings and then share a short description of the event, followed by attribution links. Users can ask follow-up questions and access relevant links from the sidebar for more information. 

OpenAI might integrate SearchGPT with its flagship AI tool, ChatGPT, in the future. Currently, the tool is provided to a limited number of users, and OpenAI has yet to share a timeline for when SearchGPT will be available for the public. 

Other than Google, SearchGPT will compete with Bing search by Microsoft, which is the biggest investor in OpenAI (Microsoft invested $13 billion in OpenAI). SearchGPT will also compete with Perplexity, a search-focused AI chatbot firm backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Nvidia. 

The San Francisco company, OpenAI, has been striking deals with companies, including News Corp, Axel Springer SE, and Time Magazine to train its artificial intelligence model SearchGPT. OpenAI is also facing lawsuits from newspapers like The New York Times for using copyrighted articles without permission.