OpenAI has announced the rollout of ChatGPT-powered internet search to all users, marking a significant challenge to Google’s dominance in the search engine market. The feature, which had previously been exclusive to paying subscribers, is now available to all logged-in free users of ChatGPT. This enhancement enables users to access fast, timely answers with links to relevant web sources, effectively turning ChatGPT into a real-time search tool.
The integration of search functionality into ChatGPT follows OpenAI’s efforts to boost the AI chatbot’s capabilities, giving users up-to-date information from across the web. OpenAI’s chief product officer, Kevin Weil, confirmed that the feature would be globally available on all platforms where ChatGPT is used. The new interface resembles traditional search results, similar to Google and Google Maps, but without the clutter of advertisements.
Unlike Google’s search engine, OpenAI’s upgrade to ChatGPT does not require users to visit external sites for their answers. Instead, the AI provides results with citations to the sources it used. This change positions ChatGPT as a conversational search engine, akin to AI-powered platforms like Perplexity, which also provide web-sourced answers in a more user-friendly, interactive format.
ChatGPT’s new search functionality marks a strategic move by OpenAI to capture a larger share of the search market, raising questions about its relationship with Microsoft, a major investor in the company. Microsoft has been pushing its Bing search engine and AI offerings in competition with Google, and this new feature will increase the computational resources and costs for OpenAI as it seeks to challenge Google’s search dominance.
