(Bloomberg) — OpenAI is adding a new set of search features to its flagship ChatGPT product, increasing the artificial intelligence startup’s challenge to Alphabet Inc.’s Google.

The option, called ChatGPT Search, will allow chatbot users to search for timely information as they would on the web and get answers with inline attribution to news publishers and other data sources, said OpenAI Thursday. The company rolled out a prototype of the product called SearchGPT in July, separate from its ChatGPT app and available only to a limited number of users. The new search features, which use OpenAI’s 4o model, will go live from the paid ChatGPT Plus. and Team Thursday users for mobile and web. OpenAI business and education customers will be able to access the features in the coming weeks and free users in the coming months. Following the viral success of ChatGPT in late 2022, tech companies raced to integrate generative AI into a long list of services, including online search. Microsoft Corp. and Google, which back OpenAI, have overhauled their search products to include more conversational AI features. Perplexity, a rival AI research startup, is currently in preliminary talks to raise funding at a valuation of $9 billion, Bloomberg previously reported. With ChatGPT Search, OpenAI is set to bring similar AI search functionality to the 250 million people who use the chatbot every week. Alphabet shares fell more than 1% on Thursday following the news.

“People want answers when they search for things, and it’s hard to get an answer on the internet right now. It requires multiple searches and you have to go through a bunch of links,” said Varun Shetty, head of media partnerships at OpenAI, in an interview with Bloomberg News. “We think being able to ask questions in a conversational way with all that relevant context and high-quality sources on the other side makes the experience even better.”

In a pre-release demo, the OpenAI team used this feature to query ChatGPT about weekend events in San Francisco. The app displayed a summary list of activities taken from local news websites. For a follow-up question about finding restaurants, ChatGPT showed a map listing local restaurants. While ChatGPT previously included some quotes in its answers, the new search functionality displays source summaries and preview images more prominently.

OpenAI has laid the foundation for its search offering through a growing number of licensing agreements with publishers including News Corp., Axel Springer SE, Time magazine as well as European media companies such as Le Monde. Partnerships allow OpenAI to include more reliable and up-to-date information in its products. OpenAI said it incorporated feedback from partner publishers for ChatGPT Search on how the chatbot decides which articles are most relevant as well as summary length and article citations. “We are convinced that AI research will be, in the near future and for the next generations, a preferred means of access to information, and the partnership with OpenAI places Le Monde at the forefront of this transition,” Louis Dreyfus, managing director of Le Monde, said in a statement.

OpenAI said its tool would not favor the company’s partner news publishers. Any website or publisher can choose to appear in ChatGPT Search, it says. The company also wants to ensure its search product is useful to people looking for information beyond the news.

“Research is a very big space and this is our first foray into this,” Shetty said. “We’re going to have to spend a lot of time improving experiences and focusing on shopping, travel, local – all those verticals that are important.”

However, as with all generative AI products, OpenAI faces the risk that its new search tool could invent false answers to questions. After SearchGPT was introduced in July, for example, journalists noted that a demo of the product included incorrect dates for a festival.

The stakes are particularly high for OpenAI and its rivals to provide accurate information about the US elections next week. Starting on Election Day, OpenAI said ChatGPT users who ask questions about the voting results will see a message encouraging them to check news sources such as the Associated Press and Reuters, as well as their state election commissions or local.

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