OpenAI on Thursday boosted its generative AI chatbot ChatGPT with search engine capabilities, as the startup takes on Google’s decades-long dominance of web search.

The upgrade allows users to receive “fast and timely responses” with links to relevant web sources – information that previously required the use of a traditional search engine, the company said.

The significant upgrade of ChatGPT enables the AI ​​chatbot to provide real-time information across the web.

ChatGPT’s homepage can now also offer direct tabs to source material on topics ranging from weather forecasts and stock prices to sports scores and breaking news, the company said.

These would be linked to news and data from providers who have signed content deals with OpenAI, including Le Monde in France, Axel Springer in Germany and the Financial Times in the UK.

Examples of the new interface shown on the OpenAI website looked very similar to search results on Google and Google Maps, but without the clutter of advertising.

They also resembled the interface of Perplexity, another AI-powered search engine that offers a more conversational version of Google with sources referenced in the response.

Both OpenAI and Perplexity are facing lawsuits from The New York Times for removing or linking to copyrighted content without authorization.

Rather than launching a separate product, OpenAI has integrated search directly into ChatGPT for paid subscribers, although this will be extended to users who use the free version of the chatbot.

Users can enable the search feature by default or enable it manually via a web search icon.

The company added that any website or publisher can choose to appear in ChatGPT’s search results, with OpenAI actively seeking feedback from content creators to further refine the system.

– ‘Favorite feature’ –

Since their launch, data on AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude has been limited by deadlines, so the responses provided were not up to date.

This has been seen as a weakness of AI chatbots, particularly at OpenAI, which lacks a standalone search engine providing more current data. In contrast, both Google and Microsoft combine AI responses with web results.

For now, the feature would not include advertising, allowing ChatGPT to offer much clearer results than Google.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote on X on Thursday that search is his “favorite feature we’ve launched” on ChatGPT since the bot’s 2022 debut.

“I find this to be a much quicker and easier way to get the information I’m looking for,” Altman added on Reddit.

The launch will raise further questions about the startup’s connection to Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI, which is also trying to expand the reach of its Bing search engine against Google.

Altman put his company on the path to becoming an Internet powerhouse.

He managed to catapult the company to a staggering $157 billion valuation in a recent fundraising round that included Microsoft, Tokyo-based conglomerate SoftBank and AI chipmaker Nvidia as investors.

Attracting new users through search engine capabilities will increase the company’s IT needs and costs, which are enormous.

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