OpenAI on head-on course with Google: Tests AI-powered search engine

Artificial intelligence company OpenAI on Thursday announced SearchGPT, an early version of a search product that shows the company is one step closer to launching its own search engine.

In a blog post, OpenAI said it is “testing SearchGPT, an interim prototype of new AI search features that gives you fast and timely answers with clear and relevant sources.”

The company said it is launching the tool to a small group of users to collect reviews and opinions and plans to integrate some version of the experience into ChatGPT. You can here to try to reserve a spot in the queue by clicking “join the waitlist” on the site.

After the announcement, CEO Sam Altman (pictured) posted on X that “there is room to make the search much better than it is today” and added that he was surprised by how much he preferred it to “old-school search.”

In the video included in the post, SearchGPT looks like Google’s search experience, with a central search bar in the middle of the screen. But there are key differences. The examples shown seem to lead to more concise answers than traditional Google, with summary answers and links included at the bottom. It also displays more limited results, unlike Google, which has pages of relevant links.

This is intentional, according to the company’s announcement. OpenAI said in its blog post that “searching for answers online can take a lot of effort” and often requires multiple attempts to “get relevant results.”

“We believe that by enhancing the conversational capabilities of our models with real-time information from the web, finding what you’re looking for can be faster and easier,” the company said in its statement.

You can also follow SearchGPT results with clarifying questions or click a button on the left side to see a larger list of sites related to the query.

In an example search for “music festivals in Boone, North Carolina in August,” a follow-up question about whether one of the events is family-friendly yields a clear answer.

OpenAI has Google in its crosshairs

With SearchGPT, OpenAI is clearly positioning itself against Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) and AI startup Perplexity’s search function.

Google‘s SGE also provides users with a summary of search results generated by AI, but the feature has not yet been made available to the public and is still being tested. Alphabet shares fell 2 percent within an hour of the announcement.

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