Last May, a rumor circulated that OpenAI was about to launch a search engine to compete with Google. Sam Altman He denied it then and what the company announced and launched was GPT-4othe latest version of the language model behind the chatbot ChatGPT. Finally, it was this Thursday when the rumors of that time were confirmed and OpenAI announced SearchGPTa prototype of the OpenAI search engine that uses artificial intelligence to summarize and offer the information sought.
As the company states on its blog, ‘SearchGPT will quickly and directly answer your questions with up-to-date information from around the web, while providing you with clear links to relevant sources. You will be able to make follow up questions, as you would do in a conversation with a personwith the shared context that is built with each query.’
ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot You can now perform web searches using Bingbut SearchGPT appears to be the interface designed by OpenAI specifically for AI-assisted searches. OpenAI You have not mentioned whether SearchGPT uses Bing to find the informationbut that is to be expected.
The company adds that SearchGPT is designed to help internet publishers get more traffic for content that will appear as answers to questions, with ‘clear, inline, named attribution and links’ to those sources. If OpenAI can deliver on this promise it will be a clear improvement over the searches currently possible with ChatGPT, where the attribution of results shows links that often do not contain the referenced information. Another issue, the elephant in the room of AI search results that OpenAI doesn’t mention, is that if the results are good, Why would a user click on the link to the original source?
The company adds that the sites that block their content so that it is not used in the training of generative AI models such as ChatGPT You may still allow your information to be used as a source for SearchGPT.
SearchGPT was launched a day after Microsoft announced that it was adding a new generative AI model for a limited number of users on its Bing search engineThis development comes a few months after Google began implementing AI-powered summaries in its search engine responses.
Those who wish to try SearchGPT can do so by visiting their official website and registering in the waiting list which will give access to the prototype to about 10,000 users. This reduced access and prototype status protects OpenAI from mistakes it might make and that led to the fact that when Google began testing AI summaries in searches in the United States, one of the questions that gained the most traction in those days was how to disable those results.
As seen in the usage examples shown by OpenAI, SearchGPT is presented with a text field that asks the user ‘What are you looking for?’ and where you should enter your request. Instead of returning a simple list of links, SearchGPT summarizes content, organizes it and makes it coherent.
Asked by music festivals in a specific locationthe search engine summarizes what it finds about them and then presents brief descriptions of the events followed by a link.
In another example, it explains when to plant tomatoes before breaking down the different varieties of the plant. After the results appear, Follow-up questions can be asked or click on any of the links relevant to this issue displayed in the sidebar.
SearchGPT is, for now, just a prototype driven by the GPT-4 family of language models. OpenAI says it is working with external partners and using direct content sources to build its search results. The goal is to eventually integrate search functions directly into ChatGPT.