The Long-Prophesied OpenAI 'ChatGPT Search,' The Search Engine Google Feared

Like it or not, the time has come. It has long been predicted and prophesied. It's inevitable.

The AI field was dull and boring, but things changed when OpenAI introduced ChatGPT, and sparked a competition like never before. Sooner than later, tech companies, large and small, engage in an arms race towards supremacy.

But one company predicted a future it never thought would come.

It was a "code red" at Google.

The company that makes it name by becoming the largest internet search engine, foresaw how a Large Language Model-powered chatbot could change human-computer interaction forever.

It realized how generative tool with its natural language processing ability could shift people’s way of looking for information online.

The company moved fast, and created Bard, which is later renamed to Gemini.

The AI was quickly embedded in pretty much all of its major products, before it's too late.

And that time has finally come.

OpenAI has revealed ChatGPT Search, its own take of an internet search engine, powered by its powerful AI.

In the announcement, OpenAI said that:

Users can use this AI-powered search engine to get answers from the web, with less effort.

According to ChatGPT, it often requires multiple searches, scrolling, and digging through links, before users can find the quality sources they're after.

With ChatGPT Search, users can get "a better answer:"

Users can use the ChatGPT Search to ask question in a more natural, conversational way, and have ChatGPT respond to their queries by scouting the web on users' behalf.

"Go deeper with follow-up questions, and ChatGPT will consider the full context of your chat to get a better answer for you," continued OpenAI.

In order to make the search engine handy, OpenAI partnered with news and data providers, so it can add up-to-date information and new visual designs for categories like weather, stocks, sports, news, and maps.

Long story short, ChatGPT search leverages data form third-party search providers, as well as content provided directly by its partners, to provide the information users are looking for.

And to ensure that users know what they sought after, ChatGPT Search allows users to not only get AI-generated answers, but also let them go straight to the source.

"Chats now include links to sources, such as news articles and blog posts, giving you a way to learn more. Click the Sources button below the response to open a sidebar with the references," explained OpenAI.

"ChatGPT responses that use search will contain inline citations. If you are interested in exploring these citations further, you can hover over the citation to learn more, and click on it to see the source. This hover feature works on desktop web," OpenAI further clarified in a dedicated help page.

OpenAI said that ChatGPT Search shall be available at chatgpt.com, as well as its desktop and mobile apps.

Initially, OpenAI is making ChatGPT Search available to all ChatGPT Plus and Team users, as well as SearchGPT waitlist users.

ChatGPT Search utilizes a fine-tuned version of GPT-4o, post-trained using novel synthetic data generation techniques, including distilling outputs from OpenAI o1-preview.

Google, including its parent company Alphabet, have been raking huge money from providing answers to users of the web. And here, OpenAI in using an AI that is more-or-less, the exact thing that enticed it in creating Gemini, to create a search engine, is no doubt one of Google's worst nightmare.

And if that isn't scaring Google enough, OpenAI further said that users can set ChatGPT as their browser's search engine, replacing Google Search.

"You can set search on ChatGPT as your Chrome browser’s default search by downloading and installing our Chrome Extension," said OpenAI.

"Once ChatGPT has been set as your default search engine, you can search directly via your browser URL bar. This will automatically start a conversation in ChatGPT that contains your search query and ChatGPTs response."