OpenAI has introduced ChatGPT Search, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered search engine built into the company’s chatbot ChatGPT. Launched on Thursday, the feature supports real-time information from the web “in a much better way than before.”
First announced as a prototype called SearchGPT in July this year, the company wrote in a blog post “Getting answers on the web can take a lot of effort, often requiring multiple attempts to get relevant results.” Adding “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.”
ChatGPT users can now search the web via the platform and get timely answers with links to relevant web sources attached, eliminating the need to use search engines like Google or Microsoft Bing.
“This blends the benefits of a natural language interface with the value of up-to-date sports scores, news, stock quotes, and more,” said OpenAI. “The chatbot will choose to search the web based on what you ask, or you can manually choose to search by clicking the web search icon.”
Powered by a fine-tuned version of OpenAI’s GPT-4o model, Search will help bridge the gap between multiple searches and digging through links to find quality sources and the right information. All a user needs to do is ask a question in a more natural, conversational way, and the feature will respond with a better answer based on the information from the web. In instances where users have follow-up questions, the functionality will consider the full context of the chat and then provide a better result.
According to the blog post, the company has partnered with news and data providers to add up-to-date information and new visual designs for categories including weather, stocks, sports, news, and maps.
OpenAI further added that they have collaborated extensively with the news industry and carefully listened to feedback from their global publisher partners including Associated Press, Axel Springer, Conde Nast, Dotdash Meredith, Financial Times, GEDI, Hearst, Le Monde, News Corp, Prisa (El País), Reuters, The Atlantic, Time, and Vox Media.
Search is available across all ChatGPT platforms including iOS, Android, and desktop apps for macOS and Windows. However, the functionality is currently only accessible to ChatGPT Plus and Team users, plus SearchGPT waitlist users. The company says both Enterprise and Edu users will get access in the next few weeks while free users will gain access in the coming months.
