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ChatGPT may be the go-to source for comprehensive AI-powered travel itineraries, meal plans, content ideas, and more, but Open AI has bigger plans.

A new feature is here to shake up the AI ​​chatbot game: ChatGPT Search.

What is ChatGPT Search?

October 31 OpenAI announced ChatGPT’s new search functionalityclaiming that the AI ​​chatbot “can now search the web in a much better way than before” and provide “quick and timely responses with links to relevant web sources.”

Initially, ChatGPT generated responses using specific training data, with very limited web search capabilities. This AI model, however, has access to the Internet and will provide links to any source from which it extracts information.

For example, asking ChatGPT for a “5-day Barcelona travel itinerary” before the new search feature would generate a well-organized bulleted list with ideas for places to visit, restaurants to eat at, and must-do activities without relevant links . . Now you may see a similar listing, but it will have easy-to-access links to book tickets, view a menu, or get more information about an activity.

If ChatGPT Search sounds like a tool you might want to try, here’s how to use it.

How to use ChatGPT search

The ChatGPT search tool will be integrated directly into the existing ChatGPT interface across the web and mobile/desktop apps, and is currently available to the following users:

• ChatGPT Plus Users

• ChatGPT Team Users

• Search GPT Waitlist Users

You should see a small globe icon with “Search” next to it, below the ChatGPT bar where you enter your requests or questions. Clicking on this web search icon will manually trigger a web search, or you can just ask your questions and make your requests as normal and let ChatGPT decide when and if to search the web for information to day.

Although only certain users will be able to use ChatGPT Search immediately, OpenAI says it plans to “roll it out to all free users over the coming months.”

Outlook

OpenAI’s ChatGPT has been the preferred AI chatbot over Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot. With this newly integrated search functionality, this could be the boost OpenAI needed to keep ChatGPT at the forefront.

Asking ChatGPT Search to create a comprehensive seven-day meal plan with linked recipes, for example, is much more useful than a seven-day meal plan with general ideas that you need to find recipes for.

Of course, with so much information to sift through and other AI models likely to help ‘AI hallucinationsChatGPT could possibly be prone to providing incorrect information.

Only time will tell how successful ChatGPT Search is among competitors like Bing and Google, but it’s hard to count out Open AI given ChatGPT’s popularity and momentum.