SearchGPT - OpenAI rival to Google/Perplexity

The Google and Perplexity rival will be available as a prototype in limited release, with plans to eventually build it into ChatGPT. OpenAI is announcing its much-anticipated entry into the search market, SearchGPT, an AI-powered search engine with real-time access to information across the internet. The search engine starts with a large textbox that asks the user “What are you looking for?” But rather than returning a plain list of links, SearchGPT tries to organize and make sense of them. In one example from OpenAI, the search engine summarizes its findings on music festivals and then presents short descriptions of the events followed by an attribution link. In another example, it explains when to plant tomatoes before breaking down different varieties of the plant. After the results appear, you can ask follow-up questions or click the sidebar to open other relevant links. There’s also a feature called “visual answers,” SearchGPT is just a “prototype” for now. The service is powered by the GPT-4 family of models and will only be accessible to 10,000 test users at launch, OpenAI spokesperson Kayla Wood tells The Verge. Wood says that OpenAI is working with third-party partners and using direct content feeds to build its search results. The goal is to eventually integrate the search features directly into ChatGPT. It’s the start of what could become a meaningful threat to Google, which has rushed to bake in AI features across its search engine, fearing that users will flock to competing products that offer the tools first. It also puts OpenAI in more direct competition with the startup Perplexity, which bills itself as an AI “answer” engine. Perplexity has recently come under criticism for an AI summaries feature that publishers claimed was directly ripping off their work. OpenAI seems to have taken note of the blowback and says it’s taking a markedly different approach. In a blog post, the company emphasized that SearchGPT was developed in collaboration with various news partners, which include organizations like the owners of The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, and Vox Media, the parent company of The Verge. “News partners gave valuable feedback, and we continue to seek their input,” Wood says. Publishers will have a way to “manage how they appear in OpenAI search features,” the company writes. They can opt out of having their content used to train OpenAI’s models and still be surfaced in search. SearchGPT is designed to help users connect with publishers by prominently citing and linking to them in searches,” according to OpenAI’s blog post. “Responses have clear, in-line, named attribution and links so users know where information is coming from and can quickly engage with even more results in a sidebar with source links.”