As a Halloween treat for ChatGPT users (and a trick for the likes of Google and Bing), OpenAI has turned its AI chatbot into an internet search engine. As the company explains in a blog post, ChatGPT is now better than ever at searching the web and capable of providing fast and timely answers to your questions with links to relevant sources.
The search feature is built into the ChatGPT interface. OpenAI added a web search icon below the text box, and while ChatGPT will decide whether or not to search based on the prompt, you can also manually choose to search with the new icon.
Search will be available on ChatGPT.com as well as on the desktop and mobile apps. ChatGPT Plus users, Team users, and SearchGPT waitlist users all have access to the feature starting on October 31. Enterprise and Edu users will get access in the next few weeks, and OpenAI will roll out access to ChatGPT Free users in the coming months.
Sources displayed prominently in ChatGPT search. Image source: OpenAI
OpenAI wants to legitimately challenge Google with a full-featured product, one that combines the power of AI with the ease and speed of a traditional search engine. To that end, OpenAI has partnered with a number of news and data providers to give users up-to-date information about weather, stocks, sports, news, and maps.
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While Google is making it increasingly difficult to find the original source of the information that it provides, OpenAI prominently displays its citations.
“ChatGPT search promises to better highlight and attribute information from trustworthy news sources, benefiting audiences while expanding the reach of publishers like ourselves who produce premium journalism,” said Pam Wasserstein, President of Vox Media.
OpenAI says that ChatGPT search is powered by “a fine-tuned version of GPT-4o, post-trained using novel synthetic data generation techniques, including distilling outputs from OpenAI o1-preview.” The company plans to continue improving the feature, specifically focusing on shopping and travel. OpenAI also wants to bring search to Advanced Voice and canvas.
