SearchGPT: OpenAI Announces Its AI Search Engine

OpenAI has launched a test prototype of its search engine called SearchGPT to provide ChatGPT users with real-time information across the internet. Only a limited number of users can access it now by joining a waitlist. 10,000 users can access it during the testing phase.

The company says the AI search features of the SearchGPT test prototype will be integrated into ChatGPT later. ChatGPT users could access web results right from their ChatGPT window. The search features will enable ChatGPT users to get up-to-date information in response to their queries.

OpenAI claims that by using its search engine in ChatGPT, you can access the most relevant web results with clear links to sources you can click on to explore further. You could also further extend the discussion in the ChatGPT window by asking follow-up questions related to the provided web results.

In its blog, OpenAI demonstrated how SearchGPT works. This AI search engine opens with a large text box asking “What are you looking for?” The company shows in an example that the search engine summarizes its web searches on music festivals in Boone, NC in August 2024. And, it comes up with real-time information on music festivals and events in the asked location. 

It provides summaries of music festivals and the resource links associated with each web result. Not only this, you can also find additional relevant web results when opening the sidebar or asking follow-up queries on the topic, like a real-time human-to-human conversation.

“Responses have clear, in-line, named attribution and links so users know where information is coming from and can quickly engage with even more results in a sidebar with source links”, OpenAI says.

SearchGPT’s demo shows it responds with images as well. For example, upon asking “Best Tomatoes to Plant in July in Minnesota” and then the follow-up question – “Which of these I can plant now?”, the search engine gives visual answers by sharing tomato images along with a short description for each image from the web results.

In another example, when asked “When can I see nudibranchs in Half Moon Bay this weekend” and a follow-up question “Will it be hot?”, it gave the weather calendar of that day in Half Moon Bay, CA, United States.

SearchGPT seems to be way better than OpenAI’s browsing web via Bing in GPT-4 and GPT-4o. Web browsing with Bing, launched in September 2023, is quite basic in comparison with SearchGPT. It doesn’t provide web results/answers in visual form like images or videos and additional web results in the sidebar. 

Let’s say, browsing with Bing is a child-experiment of OpenAI in terms of AI search while SerachGPT is such an advanced one that it can give a tough time to Google, Bing, and other traditional search engines.

The release of a temporary prototype version of SearchGPT aims to test it, find its weaknesses, and work on them before its public release into ChatGPT. It could produce incorrect results as Google’s AI Overview used to output when it was initially released. So, the prototype version would help to cancel such errors when launched fully to everyone.

The launch of the AI search engine by OpenAI seems to be a competitor to Google, Bing, and especially Perplexity which claims itself as an AI search engine. Google, Bing, and Perplexity with its AI search are facing unacceptance from publishers. Website publishers believe that these AI searches are stealing their content or hindering readers from reaching their websites directly.

OpenAI claims that it gives full control to publishers whether they want the OpenAI search engine to access and show their content or not. Publishers could be able to block OpenAI’s search bot called OAI-SearchBot, if they don’t want it to show their content in ChatGPT’s web results.

Additionally, publishers can allow or disallow GPTBot to train AI-generating models using their content. OpenAI’s GPTBot is used to access web content and train its AI models.

OpenAI says its search features are meant to connect its users with publishers by linking and citing them in its web searches. The company has partnered with News publishers such as The Atlantic, News Corp and others to build its search engine.

How to Access SearchGPT?

SearchGPT is not accessible to everyone. You can access it by joining the waitlist here.

Final Thoughts

OpenAI is launching new AI products or enhancing the existing ones with the latest ones every now and then. The progress is so fast and exciting that we just try one product, and before we explore its full potential, a new product comes up in the AI market.

The company is bringing the fabric of real-time web in ChatGPT and making it a more human-like conversational experience leading towards its aim to reach AGI.