OpenAI has just launched AI search update for ChatGPT. Three months after the company announced its SearchGPT prototype, OpenAI’s vision for the future of AI search is now publicly available.
“We’re focused on making ChatGPT the best place to go to get answers to all your questions, including up-to-date information from the Internet,” says Adam Fry, chief search product at ChatGPT. Called “ChatGPT Search Engine” rather than “SearchGPT” by Fry, the feature enters an increasingly crowded and controversial field of AI search options for users – with competition from smaller startups like Embarrassmentas well as technology giants such as Google AI review search results. So far in 2024, journalists have criticized Google and Perplexity’s implementation of AI search for improperly copying aspects of original work and causing hallucinations of false information.
The initial ChatGPT search update achieved OpenAI content licensing agreements with multiple online publishers such as The Atlantic, Vox Media and Condé Nast, WIRED’s parent company. These deals allow the AI startup to utilize publishers’ work to train its systems in exchange for a fee. (Like a firewall that connects the advertising and editorial teams, business contracts have no impact on WIRED’s coverage.)
I was quite concerned about the consequences when I first saw that my writing for WIRED was being cited by ChatGPT in 2023. After a few hours of testing the pre-release version of ChatGPT’s up-to-date AI search engine, it became clear to me that OpenAI had made significant progress since its initial sloppy a foray into web browsing, with more interactive elements and clearer attribution of sources. I saw that some of the early users were really interested in the up-to-date ChatGPT search engine.
That being said, the product needs improvement before it can truly compete with Google’s dominance in basic search features like online shopping. ChatGPT also makes some of the same mistakes as other AI search tools, such as hallucinations and providing incorrect information. Want to try the update yourself? Here’s how to utilize it and some examples from my first experiences.
How to utilize the ChatGPT search tool
To try this update immediately, you must pay for one of OpenAI’s subscriptions. If you have the $20/month ChatGPT Plus plan or ChatGPT Teams at work, the up-to-date search feature should be available. OpenAI will likely make this available to users who have Enterprise and Edu plans later in November. Users of the free version will have to wait the longest, probably until the beginning of next year.
ChatGPT search is powered by a custom version of GPT-4o, OpenAI’s latest generative model. It is available to users via ChatGPT websitemobile application (Android, Apple) and web application (Duster, Windows). In any country where ChatGPT is available, the AI search feature will likely be an option.