SearchGPT: A New Chapter for Web Navigation
Thriving AI startup OpenAI is not short of announcements in 2024 as it launches an early prototype of SearchGPT, its AI-powered search features offering that could compete with global search engines.
SearchGPT will quickly and directly respond to your questions with up-to-date information from the web while giving you clear links to relevant sources. This is much like Perplexity AI, a smaller AI model that offers references within its query responses so that the user can fact-check its response.
However, it is not just the smaller models that OpenAI is gunning for, but the larger search engines like Bing and Google too. It has been widely expected in the tech world that the new AI-powered search engine will directly compete with Google, with OpenAI positing this new offering as a responsible and measured deployment.
Redefining the online search
The prototype so far has been launched to a small group of users and publishers with the hope of gaining feedback, with OpenAI stating they plan to integrate the best features directly into its ChatGPT chatbot in the future.
Users are able to type in a query and SearchGPT offers information and photos from the web, with sources, at which point follow-up questions or additional searches can be explored. OpenAI states that it is designed to be conversational, with shared context building with each query.
“Getting answers on the web can take a lot of effort, often requiring 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.”
Significantly, SearchGPT is separate from training OpenAI’s generative AI (Gen AI) foundation models. With this prototype launch, the AI startup is seeking to test the waters as it hopes to offer users the opportunity to search online in a more natural and intuitive way.
“We think there is room to make search much better than it is today,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman comments in a post on X.
we think there is room to make search much better than it is today.
— Sam Altman (@sama) July 25, 2024
we are launching a new prototype called SearchGPT: https://t.co/A28Y03X1So
we will learn from the prototype, make it better, and then integrate the tech into ChatGPT to make it real-time and maximally helpful.
“We will learn from the prototype, make it better, and then integrate the tech into ChatGPT to make it real-time and maximally helpful.”
OpenAI cementing its position in the AI race
The SearchGPT announcement comes very shortly after OpenAI’s last announcement of its new AI model, GPT-4o mini. This new model is a mini offshoot of GPT-4o, the company’s most powerful model to date, and is designed to reflect a growing trend in the AI industry towards creating smaller and more efficient language models.
Backed by tech giant Microsoft, OpenAI has been valued at more than US$80bn by investors. As a result, the company faces immense pressure to perform and stay ahead in the rapidly developing Gen AI market as it seeks new ways to make money.
In June 2024, OpenAI also celebrated a new partnership with Apple that included ChatGPT being added to Siri. The surprise collaboration was launched alongside the “Apple Intelligence” suite of new on-device processing AI-powered features.
ChatGPT has also been added to Volkswagen cars in the all-electric ID family, with the AI chatbot accessible by the IDA voice assistant, demonstrating a new way for the EV industry to harness AI.
Committed to bolstering its C-Suite, OpenAI’s large language models (LLMs) continue to gain importance across the technology secretary. As competition continues full steam ahead, the Gen AI market is set to get even more exciting.
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