OpenAI launches SearchGPT – here's what it can do and how to access it

OpenAI transformed the artificial intelligence (AI) market by launching ChatGPT in November 2022, unleashing a generative AI era. Now, OpenAI wants to shake up the search engine market, too. 

On Thursday, OpenAI unveiled SearchGPT, its AI-powered search engine, which is aware of current events and provides real-time information from the internet. Even though the search experience is currently a prototype, OpenAI plans to integrate the best features directly into ChatGPT in the future.

SearchGPT lets you enter a search query as you would with any search engine. The biggest way it differs from a traditional search engine is that its outputs include a conversational response with real-time information pulled from the web.

Also: How to use ChatGPT

Similarly to the Browse feature in ChatGPT, when SearchGPT outputs an answer, it offers a link with the name of the site it pulled its answer from in parentheses to facilitate fact-checking and research. If you still want to see a more traditional search engine results page, you will be able to click the “link” icon on the left sidebar. This will display a list of webpages and links next to the conversational response.  

You will also be able to ask follow-up questions, which will help you get the answer you want without having to click different links or enter a new prompt. The feature is available now to some 10,000 users and publishers as OpenAI collects feedback. If you want to try the prototype, you can join the waitlist here. 

To address concerns that AI search engines could potentially harm publishers by causing fewer people to visit their websites, OpenAI says that SearchGPT was designed to connect publishers and users by including proper attribution, linking, and citing to the original source. In its release, OpenAI also reassures the public that it is working closer with publishers to build the experience in a mutually beneficial way.

Publishers will also be able to manage how their webpages appear in SearchGPT, giving them some control over their participation in the experience. Additionally, publishers can choose not to have their content used for training OpenAI’s generative AI models while still having their webpages appear in SearchGPT’s results. 

It’s unclear if once SearchGPT’s best features are added to ChatGPT, whether that will be enough to sway people away from Google, which dominates the search engine space with a 91% share, according to StatCounter. 

Also: How does ChatGPT work?

Even though SearchGPT functions a lot like a traditional search engine, OpenAI has made it clear in the past that it’s not interested in creating another search engine. “I don’t think the world needs another copy of Google,” Sam Altman said on the Lex Fridman podcast earlier this year.

Rather, OpenAI has set its sights on integrating the best SearchGPT features into ChatGPT to elevate the chatbot’s capabilities and build on what the tool already offers. Presumably, users who already consistently use ChatGPT will be incentivized to use it more. They can have the same ChatGPT experience they know and love, including its conversational responses, plus the bonus of what search engines offer. 

Microsoft took a stab at adding generative AI to search with its Copilot integration into Bing in September 2023, and the results have been positive. In a Q3 2024 earnings call, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that Bing reached over 140 million daily active users, which marked a gain of over 40 million users in a year. Similarly, Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine, has gained 10 million active monthly users and has a $1 billion valuation, according to reports. That said, neither company has come close to threatening Google’s search dominance.

Also: The best AI search engines of 2024: Google, Perplexity, and more

Google has continuously introduced updates to its search engine to keep up with the AI boom. The company announced its Search Generative Experience (SGE) at Google I/O 2023 and rolled out AI-generated overviews widely at Google I/O 2024. 

That said, Google had to adjust its AI search strategy because of user complaints and problems with its AI Overview citations. Google cut back on the number of search pages that show the AI Overview feature.