OpenAI Introduces SearchGPT, Its AI-Powered Web Search Engine

The Google and Perplexity competitor will be available as a prototype in limited release, with plans to integrate it into ChatGPT eventually.

OpenAI is announcing its eagerly awaited entry into the search market, SearchGPT, an AI-powered web search engine with real-time access to information across the web.

The search engine begins with a large textbox that asks the user, “What are you searching for?” Rather than returning a plain list of links, SearchGPT attempts to organize and interpret them. In one example from OpenAI, the search engine summarizes its findings on music festivals and then presents short descriptions of the events followed by an attribution link.

In another example, it explains when to plant tomatoes before breaking down different varieties of the plant. After the results appear, you can ask follow-up questions or click the sidebar to open other relevant links. There’s also a feature called “visual answers,” but OpenAI did not provide details to Techloot before publication on exactly how this works.

SearchGPT is just a “prototype” for now. The service is powered by the GPT-4 family of models and will only be accessible to 10,000 test users at launch, OpenAI spokesperson Kayla Wood told Techloot. Wood mentioned that OpenAI is collaborating with third-party partners and using direct content feeds to build its search results. The goal is to eventually integrate the search features directly into ChatGPT.

This marks the beginning of what could become a significant threat to Google, which has been rapidly integrating AI features into its search engine, fearing that users will migrate to competing products offering these tools first. It also puts OpenAI in direct competition with the startup Perplexity, which markets itself as an AI “answer” engine. Perplexity has recently faced criticism for an AI summaries feature that publishers claimed was directly copying their work.

OpenAI seems to have taken this feedback into account and is adopting a notably different approach. In a blog post, the company emphasized that SearchGPT was developed in collaboration with various news partners, including organizations like the owners of The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, and Vox Media, the parent company of Techloot. “News partners provided valuable feedback, and we continue to seek their input,” Wood stated.

Publishers will have a way to “manage how they appear in OpenAI search features,” the company wrote. They can opt out of having their content used to train OpenAI’s models but still be surfaced in search.

“SearchGPT is designed to help users connect with publishers by prominently citing and linking to them in searches,” according to OpenAI’s blog post. “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.”

Releasing its search engine as a prototype benefits OpenAI in several ways. First, if SearchGPT’s results are significantly incorrect—like when Google rolled out AI Overviews and suggested putting glue on our pizza—it’s easier to excuse by saying it’s a prototype. There’s also potential for incorrect attributions or possibly copying articles, as Perplexity was accused of doing.

This new product has been in the rumor mill for months, with The Information reporting on its development in February, followed by more details from Bloomberg in May. We reported that OpenAI had been aggressively trying to recruit Google employees for a search team. Some X users also noticed a new website OpenAI has been working on that hinted at this move.

OpenAI has been gradually bringing ChatGPT more in touch with the real-time web. When GPT-3.5 was released, the AI model was already several months out of date. Last September, OpenAI released a feature for ChatGPT to browse the web, called Browse with Bing, but it appears much more basic than SearchGPT.

The rapid advancements by OpenAI have earned ChatGPT millions of users, but the company’s costs are mounting. The Information reported this week that OpenAI’s AI training and inference costs could reach $7 billion this year, with millions of users on the free version of ChatGPT further driving up compute costs. SearchGPT will be free during its initial launch, and since the feature currently has no ads, it’s clear the company will need to figure out monetization soon.