Photo courtesy: OpenAI
Artificial intelligence company OpenAI has recently revealed that it would start testing a prototype of its AI-powered search engine dubbed SearchGPT, which aims to challenge existing search engines, such as Google, Microsoft Bing, and Perplexity, by offering a more conversational and organised approach to retrieving information from the internet.
“We’re testing SearchGPT, a prototype of new search features designed to combine the strength of our AI models with information from the web to give you fast and timely answers with clear and relevant sources,” OpenAI stated in its Thursday blog post. “We’re launching to a small group of users and publishers to get feedback. While this prototype is temporary, we plan to integrate the best of these features directly into ChatGPT in the future.”
SearchGPT is powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 models and is initially available to only 10,000 users and publishers. This controlled rollout aims to gather feedback and refine the tool before broader accessibility.
OpenAI spokesperson Kayla Wood emphasised that on top of using direct content feeds, the company is working with various news partners, including The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, and Vox Media, to build its search results. By doing this, publishers will have a way to “manage how they appear in OpenAI search features.” They also have the option to prevent their content from being used for training SearchGPT while still having their content appear in search results.
What SearchGPT Looks Like
The search engine starts with a large textbox, prompting users with the question, “What are you looking for?” SearchGPT then provides summarised findings on topics, with short descriptions followed by attribution links. Additional results will be displayed in a sidebar.
“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,” OpenAI stated.
While OpenAI announced the selective rollout of SearchGPT, the company has not specified a timeline for its full deployment.