OpenAI has officially launched its highly anticipated search engine, ChatGPT, offering improved web search capabilities for timely and accurate answers. This feature, available to ChatGPT Plus and Team users, blends natural language interaction with up-to-date data in sports, news, stock quotes, and more. It enables deeper engagement with source-linked information, enhancing users’ access to trustworthy content. The search feature was first spotted by a user on X and shortly after, OpenAI confirmed its release in a statement. The search model is a fine-tuned version of GPT-4o, post-trained using novel synthetic data generation techniques, including distilling outputs from OpenAI o1-preview. This feature has been highly praised by users, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stating that it has doubled his usage of ChatGPT. In addition to the search engine, OpenAI has also released a feature that allows users to search for content from their previous conversations. They are also working on integrations with Slack and Google Workspace for enterprise customers, enabling them to add external information and context to ChatGPT. While ChatGPT Search may face competition from other AI-powered search engines like Perplexity, Bing, and Google’s AI overviews, OpenAI has struck partnerships with top publishers like Le Monde, Vox, News Corp, TIME, and Financial Times. This gives them access to a wealth of information and could potentially give them an edge over other search engines. OpenAI has also made it clear that they will not be including ads in ChatGPT anytime soon, providing users with a clean and ad-free search experience. This launch comes on the same day that Google announced its AI learning tool, Learn About, and it will be interesting to see how ChatGPT Search compares to it. With its access to top publishers and commitment to a thriving ecosystem of publishers and creators, OpenAI may very well become a major player in the search engine market.
