OpenAI Launches ChatGPT Search Feature, Challenging Google's Dominance

On Thursday, OpenAI enhanced its ChatGPT generative AI chatbot by incorporating search engine capabilities, intensifying its competition with Google's long-standing dominance in web search.

This upgrade allows users to receive "fast, timely answers" complete with links to relevant web sources—information that previously required a traditional search engine, according to the company.

The update significantly boosts ChatGPT's ability to provide real-time information from across the internet. Its homepage now features direct access to sourced content on various topics, including weather updates, stock prices, sports scores, and breaking news, thanks to partnerships with publishers like France's Le Monde, Germany's Axel Springer, and the UK's Financial Times.

The new interface resembles Google’s search results and Google Maps, minus the clutter of ads. It also shares similarities with Perplexity, another AI-driven search engine that offers a conversational alternative to traditional search results, citing sources within its answers.

Both OpenAI and Perplexity are currently facing lawsuits from the New York Times for allegedly scraping or linking to copyrighted material without permission.

Instead of launching a separate product, OpenAI has integrated the search functionality directly into ChatGPT for its paying subscribers, with plans to expand it to free users. Users can either enable the search feature by default or activate it manually via a web search icon.

OpenAI noted that any website or publisher can opt-in to appear in ChatGPT’s search results, and the company is actively seeking feedback from content creators to improve the system.

Since their introduction, AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude have been limited by data cutoffs, often providing outdated answers. This has been seen as a disadvantage, particularly for OpenAI, which lacks a standalone search engine that delivers timely data, unlike Google and Microsoft, which integrate AI answers with web results.

For the time being, the new feature will not include advertisements, allowing ChatGPT to deliver cleaner results compared to Google.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman expressed on X that the search capability is his "favourite feature" launched on ChatGPT since its inception in 2022. He mentioned on Reddit that it provides a "much faster/easier way" to find information.

This launch raises further questions about OpenAI's relationship with Microsoft, a key investor looking to expand the reach of its Bing search engine against Google. Altman aims to position OpenAI as a major player in the internet landscape, having achieved a remarkable $157 billion valuation in a recent fundraising round involving investors like Microsoft, SoftBank, and Nvidia.

The introduction of search engine capabilities is likely to increase the company's computing needs and associated costs, which are already substantial.