(New York) OpenAI announced Thursday that it is testing a search engine with a select group of users, a feature it plans to integrate into ChatGPT and which would position it a little more as a competitor to Google.
Responses to queries formulated in SearchGPT, the name of the engine, will integrate elements of its GPT-4 generative artificial intelligence (AI) model, as well as information collected directly from the internet.
Unlike ChatGPT, which produces written responses without further references, SearchGPT also provides links to third-party sites, which were used as sources.
In this respect, it is similar to AI Overviews, a new-generation search engine presented in mid-May by Google, which operates on a similar principle.
SearchGPT “is designed to help users connect with content creators by prominently citing and linking” to sites, OpenAI said in a presentation posted online Thursday.
There start-up said it has formed partnerships with content publishers, which allows them, among other things, to choose how they appear in a response to a query.
OpenAI clarifies that sites may be mentioned by SearchGPT even if their owners refuse to allow their content to be used to develop generative AI interfaces like ChatGPT.
According to the group, SearchGPT is not intended to exist on its own beyond the testing phase. “We plan to integrate the best elements into ChatGPT in the future,” OpenAI said.
By now offering direct links and references, ChatGPT would thus be moving closer to Google, whose hegemony remains almost total on the search engine market.
Despite adding generative AI to its Bing search engine through its partnership with OpenAI, Microsoft has failed to take share from Google.
After the launch of AI Overviews, many observers were concerned that new search engines would only include a few links and sources, risking weakening the rest of the ecosystem.
Already weakened by quarterly results deemed insufficient, the share price of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, reacted badly to the OpenAI announcement and lost 2.99% on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday, after having already dropped more than 5% on Wednesday.