ChatGPT is officially an AI-powered web search engine. The company allow real-time insights in conversations for paid subscribers today (as well as SearchGPT waitlist users), with free, business, and education users gaining access in the coming weeks.

Rather than launching as a separate product, web search will be integrated into ChatGPT’s existing interface. The feature determines when to access web results based on queries, although users can also manually trigger web searches. ChatGPT’s web search integration finally closes a key competitive gap with competitors such as Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini, which have long offered real-time Internet access in their AI conversations.

In a pre-launch demo, Adam Fry, OpenAI’s ChatGPT Research Lead, demonstrated the feature by searching for Apple stocks and any relevant news. In return, it displayed an interactive stock chart, information about upcoming earnings, and news articles with clickable quotes linking to original sources. There is also a sources sidebar that allows users to scroll through a list of relevant websites. In another example, Fry searched for Italian restaurants in San Francisco, which returned an interactive map with pins for recommended restaurants. In both examples, Fry asked follow-up questions to refine the result (like finding restaurants that were “more casual and closer to the neighborhood”).

The new search functionality will be available on all ChatGPT platforms: iOS, Android and desktop apps for macOS and Windows. The search functionality was built with “a mix of search technologies,” including Microsoft’s Bing, Fry said. The company wrote in a blog Thursday that the underlying search model is a refined version of GPT-4o. It was initially released to 10,000 test users as a prototype called SearchGPT in July, and we reported in May that OpenAI was aggressively trying to poach Google employees for its own search team.

Before this update, ChatGPT’s knowledge was limited to a cutoff between 2021 and 2023 depending on the models. OpenAI spokesperson Niko Felix said that even with live research active, the company will continue to refresh its training data to “ensure our users always have access to the latest advances,” but that this is ” distinct” from the formation of models of society.

The launch comes as AI-based research ramps up among tech giants. The meta is would have developing its own AI search solution, while Google recently expanded its function of showcasing AI in over 100 countries. When asked about the timing coinciding with Alphabet’s results on Tuesday (showing that Research revenues earned in the third quarter in $49.4 billion), Fry maintained that the release was independently timed.

This is one of the obvious reasons why a user might choose ChatGPT over Google Search: there’s no clutter of ads or sponsored queries pinned to the top. While Google does a lot money on advertising in search results, Fry said there are currently “no plans” to advertise in ChatGPT. Still, AI-based search is more expensive to operate than traditional search, and it’s not yet clear how OpenAI will fund it for free users. Felix said free users will have “some limits on how often they can use our latest search models.”

Many AI search services are also facing lawsuits. News Corp and The New York Times filed suit against AI-based search startup Perplexity, the former accusing this is “massive freeriding” and “large-scale” copyright infringement. The New York Times also sued OpenAI for allegedly using the media company’s hardware to train its large language models. When asked how exactly OpenAI would escape even greater scrutiny, Fry pointed to the company’s media partnerships. (The edge(Parent company, Vox Media, has a partnership with OpenAI.)

“We’re working very, very closely with all of these partners to understand how to use this content in a really responsible way and also help drive great results for the publisher partners,” Fry said, adding that any publisher can simply opt out of the site OpenAI Web. caterpillar. This web crawler also won’t bypass paywalls, he said.

OpenAI has struck a litany of media partnerships over the past year, including big names like Hearst., Conde Nast, Axel Springer, And News Corp.. Although Fry says these partners will have more “control” over how their content appears in ChatGPT, they will not automatically be given higher priority in queries.

As for hallucinations — like when Google’s AI previews infamously told users to put glue on their pizza — Fry thinks ChatGPT search will “increase factual accuracy overall.”

“Some hallucinations simply come from not having access to the latest information. And now that he has access to the most up-to-date information, it really helps him make better decisions about what the answer is true and factual,” Fry said. Asked if edge cases exist and mistakes are inevitable, he said “we will try to be transparent” if that happens.

ChatGPT’s web search is also debuting just days before the US presidential election, making its need for accuracy more crucial than ever. Fry said that “we hope” that with this tool “we can elevate authoritative sources on where to get election information” and that the company pays “special attention” to election queries.