OpenAI said on Monday it was making ChatGPT-powered Internet searches available to all users, increasing the threat to Google’s dominance.
The San Francisco-based tech firm enhanced its ChatGPT Generator AI chatbot with search engine capabilities in late October, but the feature was only made available to paying customers.
The company said the new public feature will enable users to get “fast, timely answers” with links to relevant web sources – information previously required using traditional search engines.
Upgrades to ChatGPT enable AI chatbots to provide real-time information from across the web.
“We’re bringing search to all logged-in free users of ChatGPIT,” Kevin Weil, chief product officer at OpenAI, said in a video posted on YouTube.
“This means it will be available globally on every platform where you use ChatGPT.”
Examples of the new interface demonstrated by OpenAI resemble search results provided by Google and Google Maps, although without the clutter of advertising.
They also appeared similar to the interface of Perplexity, another AI-powered search engine that offers a more conversational version of Google by displaying sources referenced in answers.
“We’re really just making the ChatGPT experience you know better with the latest information from the web,” Adam Fry, ChatGPT search product lead, said in the video.
“We’re rolling it out to millions of users starting today.”
Instead of launching a separate product, OpenAI has integrated search directly into ChatGPT.
Users can enable the search feature by default or activate it manually through the web search icon.
Since their launch, data on AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Anthropic Cloud has been limited due to time limits, so the answers they provide were not up to date.
In contrast, both Google and Microsoft integrate AI-generated answers with web results.
Adding online search to ChatGPIT will raise more questions about the startup’s links with Microsoft, a major OpenAI investor, which is also trying to expand the reach of its Bing search engine against Google.
OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman has led his company on the path to becoming an Internet powerhouse.
He successfully led the company to an astonishing valuation of $157 billion in a recent round of fundraising, which included Microsoft, Tokyo-based conglomerate SoftBank and AI chip maker Nvidia as investors.
Enticing new users with search engine capabilities will increase the company’s computing needs and costs, which are extremely high.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
