What to know

  • OpenAI announced SearchGPT, an AI-powered search engine prototype that competes with Google search.
  • SearchGPT combines AI features with the web to provide real-time answers to queries in a conversational interface.
  • Select users can test the SearchGPT prototype starting today. Sign up and join the waitlist. 

In a watershed announcement, OpenAI revealed SearchGPT – an AI-powered search engine that combines AI models with real-time information from the web.  

As highlighted on the company’s website, SearchGPT opens with a text field where users can enter their query. But unlike the traditional search engines of old that simply listed the results, SearchGPT will use the power of AI to make sense of the results and provide clear answers with context and links to relevant sources. 

Image: OpenAI

Leveraging ChatGPT’s conversational interface, users will be able to ask follow-up questions and build upon shared context. Apparently, there’ll also be a ‘visual answers’ feature that provides images and videos pertaining to the results. 

Image: OpenAI

OpenAI is partnering with publishers and creators to highlight and deliver high quality content using SearchGPT. It’s also launching a way in which publishers can control how their content appears in SearchGPT. The company notes:

“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.”

For now, SearchGPT is only a prototype and will have to go through heavy testing and solicit feedback to get better. It’ll be available to select test users and we strongly recommend you sign up and join the waitlist today. 

Ultimately, the AI search features will be implemented into ChatGPT itself. Though it is still early days, OpenAI’s SearchGPT is now in direct competition with Google that has tried, in its own way, to shoehorn AI into search. Learning from its competitor’s mistakes and releasing it as a prototype will help SearchGPT get away with inaccuracies and incorrect results that seem to plague such AI forays into search. 

Interesting times lie ahead. So stay tuned for all the updates on SearchGPT, how it works, and how to go about using it.