OpenAI has announced the launch of its own AI search engine dubbed SearchGPT. The new search engine will compete with the likes of the existing ones, such as Google’s and also Microsoft’s Bing. However, SearchGPT cannot be accessed by the general public as of now. The first mention of a search engine being in works at OpenAI came via a leak months back.
Announced via a blog post, SearchGPT is currently a prototype of new search features designed to combine the strength of OpenAI’s AI models with information from the web to give users “fast and timely answers with clear and relevant sources.”
The company is launching SearchGPT to a small group of users and publishers to get feedback. While this prototype is temporary, OpenAI plans to integrate the best of these features directly into ChatGPT in the future.
As for the features of SearchGPT, it will quickly and directly respond to your questions with up-to-date information from the web while giving you clear links to relevant sources, according to the company.
In addition, users will be able to ask follow-up questions, like you would in a conversation with a person, with the shared context building with each query.
“We hope to help users discover publisher sites and experiences, while bringing more choice to search,” said OpenAI.
Additionally, OpenAI says that SearchGPT is designed to help users connect with publishers by prominently citing and linking to them in searches. Responses from SearchGPT will 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.
In addition to launching the SearchGPT prototype, OpenAI is also launching a way for publishers to manage how they appear in SearchGPT, so publishers have more choices. Importantly, SearchGPT is about search and is separate from training OpenAI’s generative AI foundation models. Sites can be surfaced in search results even if they opt out of generative AI training.
This development comes at a time when both Google and Microsoft have also been pushing into the AI search space. While Google was under a lot of heat due to its AI Overviewes fiasco, Microsoft just announced something similar for its Bing search engine yesterday.