I have been a ChatGPT Plus user for about a year, and I think the $20/month subscription is worth it to access some of OpenAI’s best ChatGPT features. One of them is the new ChatGPT Search product which directly competes with Google Search. This is probably the AI ​​product some people are using Google I’ve always dreaded the moment when ChatGPT went viral in late 2022.

I can’t say I needed ChatGPT Search that much since ChatGPT Plus already searches the web during prompts. Also, I haven’t made ChatGPT Search my default search engineand I say this as someone who abandoned Google search long before generative AI chatbots were all the rage.

But I appreciate this OpenAI done with the ChatGPT interface now that ChatGPT Search is a real product. Whenever ChatGPT needs to search the web to answer my prompts, it now displays the sources by default. Not only that, but the UI gets a new tab where I see multiple sources I can visit to check the chatbot’s accuracy.

Don’t forget that I have been telling you for almost two years that ChatGPT and its ilk are prone to hallucinations. It’s making things up that aren’t factually accurate. Big Google Search fumbles with AI insights will always come to mind. This genAI product thought putting glue on a pizza was safe because he couldn’t discern the irony in things he read on Reddit while training.

From the early days of personalized instructions on ChatGPT, I asked the chatbot to give me the sources for any claims it makes in its response. This experience was pretty good. Indeed, ChatGPT regularly offers links that do not work. These pages were no longer available for me to read.

In continuing the ChatGPT Search project, OpenAI also had to improve this aspect of the user experience. The user will need to get links to the search results, the same way Google search works.

If you use ChatGPT Search to search the web, you will always get the sources at the end of the answer. Here’s an example: I searched for “Spider-Man 4 release date.” Notice the Sources at the end of the prompt and the links after each paragraph:

Click this button and a vertical Quotes A menu opens on the right side containing several links that address the subject:

But I just said that I don’t use ChatGPT Search much. In other words, I don’t press the Search button (seen in blue above).

Instead, I use ChatGPT GPT-4o most of the time to find answers to my questions. This is actually what made me realize that the ChatGPT Plus experience has improved so much thanks to ChatGPT Search.

I looked at recent rumors about Spider-Man 4 earlier today and wanted to update some information. I went to ChatGPT with a few questions. The chatbot responded to them by searching online, although I didn’t specifically use ChatGPT Search. Note that no blue button is active in the prompt bar:

However, OpenAI gives me the same Sources tab at the end of the answer. Clicking on it opens the same new Search results menu on the right, giving me access to many search answers.

This will make fact-checking ChatGPT answers even easier than before. ChatGPT Plus users would have access to the sources of complaints made by ChatGPT. The chatbot will probably continue to hallucinate. But you will be able to verify the information without providing custom instructions that allow ChatGPT to display links to sources. ChatGPT does everything by default.

OpenAI rolled out these UI updates only a few days ago, but I didn’t really pay attention to them. I clicked on the ChatGPT Plus links, which would open in other browser tabs before the new menu appeared. I actually did the ChatGPT search “Spider-Man 4 release date” which I first showed you only after noticing the Search results menu in a regular chat with ChatGPT GPT-4o.

If I still used Google Search, these new ChatGPT Plus and ChatGPT Search features would be enough for me to consider abandoning it. Although I still use DuckDuckGo for other searches and Google Maps for specific store and business information, I could actually give ChatGPT Search more screen time than before.

I will also note that ChatGPT users on the free tier will not have access to the Internet search features in prompts and will not have ChatGPT search available separately. All of the above applies to paid ChatGPT tiers at this time.