OpenAI's rival to Google search is here

While Google faces threats to its search-engine dominance, OpenAI has a new prototype it plans to add to its challenger, ChatGPT.

OpenAI announced Thursday it is testing SearchGPT, a temporary prototype of artificial intelligence-powered search features it plans to integrate with ChatGPT. SearchGPT can provide users with faster answers that include links to relevant sources, according to OpenAI. The prototype is currently being launched to a small group of testers and publishers for feedback, and the company has a waitlist for interested users.

The company said the prototype is designed to connect users with publishers through “prominently citing and linking to them.” OpenAI has signed a number of licensing deals with news publishers to train its AI models on news content. However, the company is also facing copyright lawsuits from book authors, artists, and other creators who are arguing against their content being used to train models. In addition to the prototype, OpenAI said it is launching a tool for publishers to manage their appearance in SearchGPT.

The new prototype is designed to answer questions with up-to-date information pulled from the web. Users can then ask follow-up questions in a conversational style, OpenAI said.

“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,” OpenAI said in a blog post.

OpenAI said SearchGPT is separate from training its generative AI foundation models, so websites that have opted out of being used for generative AI training can still show up in SearchGPT’s sources.

In February, it was reported that OpenAI was developing a search-engine product to boost its competition with Google. However, rising ad revenue from Google Search drove Google’s profits up nearly 60% in the first quarter of the year. Analysts at Bank of America said earlier this month the search giant’s global search market share rose to 91.9% in June, while ChatGPT’s web visits dropped 12%.