OpenAI has announced its AI-powered search engine, designed to combine the strengths of its AI models with information gathered from the web. In its recent release, OpenAI has claimed that its upcoming search engine provides fast and timely answers with relevant sources on the internet. OpenAI is still testing SearchGPT and it has been launched only for a small group of 10,000 testers. The company has also revealed that this is only a temporary prototype. Later, it will be integrated with ChatGPT.

But does it sound familiar? Yes, it is essentially an alternative to Google, the most popularly used search engine. The search engine starts with a large textbox that asks the user “What are you looking for?” While traditionally ChatGPT throws a ton of links at you, SearchGPT tries to organize them and make sense of them.

OpenAI shared an example of this. For instance, a user searches about music festivals. SearchGPT will summarize its findings on music festivals and then present a short description of the events, followed by an attribution link.

In another example, it tells you when to plant tomatoes before different varieties of plants break down. Once you get the result, you can explore it further by asking additional questions, accessing related links in the sidebar, or using the “Visual Answers” feature, which offers a unique way of presenting information, although its exact functionality has not been disclosed by OpenAI.

In a blog post, the company highlighted that SearchGPT has been developed in collaboration with various news partners, including organisations such as The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, and Vox Media owner.

It added, “Importantly, SearchGPT is about search and is separate from the training of OpenAI’s Generative AI Foundation models. Sites may appear in search results even if they exit generative AI training.”

The launch of SearchGPT shows OpenAI’s dedication to improving ChatGPT and bringing a more real-time web. But since it’s a prototype, there’s a chance it will give spectacularly wrong answers, just like when Google asked us to put glue on a pizza. It’s hard to say when SearchGPT will be launched for everyone. But given OpenAI’s momentum, the release isn’t far off.