OpenAI challenges Google with launch of ChatGPT search

OpenAI promises answers with links to relevant sources using fine-tuned version of GPT-4o

OpenAI has launched its long-awaited challenger to Google: ChatGPT search. The service represents a development on SearchGPT, the prototype it unveiled in the summer.

“The search model is a fine-tuned version of GPT-4o, post-trained using novel synthetic data generation techniques,” the organisation explains. It continues: “ChatGPT search leverages third-party search providers, as well as content provided directly by our partners.”

The idea is to blend the benefits of an AskJeeves-style natural language interface with search results that actually address users’ requests. OpenAI has also partnered with news and other information providers to provide up-to-date weather reports, stocks and shares, news, sports and maps – the standard fare that people routinely go to a search engine for.

“ChatGPT can now search the web in a much better way than before. You can get fast, timely answers with links to relevant web sources, which you would have previously needed to go to a search engine for. This blends the benefits of a natural language interface with the value of up-to-date sports scores, news, stock quotes, and more,” the organisation promises.

It also means that ChatGPT can both provide the kind of discursive, long-form responses associated with online AI services, as well as their sources. The organisation has partnered with a range of big-name media companies to get them onside. These include Reuters, Associated Press, Financial Times, Axel Springer, News Corp and more.

Another AI-based search platform, Perplexity AI, was sued last month by Murdoch's Dow Jones and New York Post, claiming illegal use of copyrighted works.

ChatGPT Plus and Team users will be the first to get access to ChatGPT search on mobile and the web, followed by OpenAI’s enterprise and educational customers in the next few weeks. Free users will have to wait a little longer to sample the delights of ChatGPT search.

The new AI-based search service follows years of rising complaints about the increasingly poor quality of Google’s search service, the result of years of tuning to mitigate “SEO spam”, as well as to provide politically palatable results. The main rivals to Google – if you could call it that, given Google’s overwhelming share of the search market – are Microsoft’s Bing and DuckDuckGo, which are open to similar criticisms.