OpenAI's Google challenger is finally here.
The company on Thursday began ChatGPT Search, an evolution of the SearchGPT prototype introduced this summer. ChatGPT Search is integrated into OpenAI's ChatGPT platform and is designed to supply “timely answers” to questions, OpenAI says, drawing on a spread of online sources.
Built on a fine-tuned version of OpenAI's GPT-4o model, ChatGPT Search provides information and photos from around the online—like sports scores, news, stock quotes, and more—in addition to links to relevant sources where you may ask follow-up inquiries to refine a ongoing search.
ChatGPT searches the online based in your questions. Alternatively, you may search manually by clicking the brand new web search icon.
Responses are attributed to news publishers and other data sources with which OpenAI has license agreements, each within the row and within the sidebar. For example, a seek for weekend events in San Francisco might lead to a summary pulled from local news web sites, while a follow-up query about restaurant suggestions might return an inventory of local options.
Election-related queries are routed to sources reminiscent of AP and Reuters, OpenAI says.
ChatGPT Plus and Teams users will initially gain access to ChatGPT search on mobile and web, while OpenAI's enterprise and education customers will receive ChatGPT search in the approaching weeks, followed by free users.
OpenAI says it plans to proceed improving search, particularly in areas like shopping and travel, and use its o1 “reasoning models” for “deeper research.” The company also plans to integrate ChatGPT search into the Enhanced Voice Mode feature in addition to for users logged out of ChatGPT.
Some publishers have protested against AI-generated digests like ChatGPT Search and Google's AI digests, saying they threaten to cannibalize traffic to the sites from which they get their information. A study found that AI overviews could negatively impact around 25% of publisher traffic as a consequence of less emphasis on article links.
OpenAI says it has taken under consideration feedback from publishing partners about how ChatGPT Search decides which articles are most relevant to a search query, in addition to determining abstract length and citations for articles.
