With SearchGPT, OpenAI is expected to launch its first-ever search engine product as a working showcase of their AI technology. Earlier this week, the firm announced SearchGPT, an AI-powered search engine built to read and hunt down information from around the web on demand. With this move, OpenAI looks set to compete against existing search engines such as Google and Microsoft Bing. These are 4 things you need to know about SearchGPT while it’s in testing.
- Currently, SearchGPT is in Test Drive Phase
For now, OpenAI is testing SearchGPT with a limited number of users and online publishers who have collaborated to test the search engine with searched. OpenAI is rolling out these capabilities in a limited release so that it can get feedback and adjust before releasing more broadly. In the test phase of the development process, this is a crucial step to guarantee that not only does SearchGPT function as users expect it should but also returns ready useful and accurate search results with an AI model at its core. - Improved Siri Conversational Search Functions
OpenAI noted in a blog post that surfacing an answer requires people to try multiple searches, the best resources for answering this question do not exist online. SearchGPT attempts to address this by automatically using the web as real-time information for enhancing NLP models with conversational ability. We will be asking SearchGPT questions through natural, conversational queries in a similar way we speak to another informed human. Hopefully, this methodology is going to help users find the information they want more quickly and practically, given that it allows them to ask questions on top of their search as well as retry or change the searches dynamically. - Google, Microsoft Bing, and Perplexity are among other contestants
The move brings OpenAI neck-and-neck with the search space’s biggest players by introducing SearchGPT. With a 91.1% market share in the search space as of June 2024, per Statcounter—Google remains SearchGPT’s biggest competitor, but new AI-powered search providers such as Microsoft Bing and upstarts like Perplexity are software that rivals must also consider. Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine for chatbots, which has been funded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Nvidia, among others, is yet another example of a wide shift in the world towards integrating AI into searches. - Resemblance to AI Google Overviews
We first noticed just yesterday that Google was introducing AI-generated summaries at the top of search results via its new “Overviews” feature when we’re now wondering if SearchGPT essentially works in a similar way! When a user makes an inquiry, this Overviews provides written information that Google assumes meets the needs of their question and is located over standard website links. This sounds very similar to OpenAI’s explanation of SearchGPT that uses a search engine-like approach and produces short, relevant snippets given the user-provided query. This similarity may suggest that OpenAI is moving its search technology to the state of the art, trying to offer a competitive and user-friendly experience.
To sum it up: the future of AI-Powered search
With SearchGPT going into testing, it seems to be a major step by OpenAI to expand the AI capabilities from their conversational agents such as ChatGPT over to search engines. SearchGPT will rely on OpenAI’s GPT-3 model to perform searches, and it could change how we find information across the web by challenging major incumbents like Google with an AI spin. We will see what kind of an impact SearchGPT makes on the future and broader landscape of AI-driven tools as this technology evolves.
