By Emmanuel Ogbodo
OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, is venturing into Google’s domain by launching SearchGPT, a search tool designed to compete with Google Search.
OpenAI and Google are already leading competitors in the AI field, with ChatGPT and Gemini both aiming to attract more users.
Announcing the launch, OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman expressed a desire to improve current search capabilities.
“We believe there is potential to significantly enhance search. We’re introducing a new prototype called SearchGPT. We’ll learn from it, improve it, and eventually integrate the technology into ChatGPT to make it real-time and highly useful,” Altman shared in a post on X.
The launch of SearchGPT, announced on Thursday, also positions OpenAI against its major supporter Microsoft’s Bing and emerging services like Perplexity—a search-focused AI chatbot firm supported by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and semiconductor giant Nvidia.
OpenAI has begun sign-ups for the new tool, currently in the prototype stage and being tested with a select group of users and publishers.
“Finding answers online can require considerable effort, often needing multiple tries to obtain relevant results. By enhancing our models’ conversational abilities with real-time web information, we aim to make finding what you need faster and easier,” OpenAI stated on its website, encouraging users to join the waitlist.
According to web analytics firm Statcounter, Google leads the search engine market with a 91.05% share as of June. Microsoft’s Bing holds 3.74%, while Yandex and Yahoo Search account for 1.44% and 1.26%, respectively.
Major search engines have been integrating AI into search since ChatGPT’s debut in November 2022. Microsoft, through its early investment, incorporated OpenAI technology into its Bing search engine, while Google introduced AI-powered summaries to the public at its developer conference in May.
Meanwhile, OpenAI’s SearchGPT launch coincided with Google’s announcement of an upgrade to the free-tier experience to Gemini 1.5 Flash, promising quicker and more helpful responses.
According to Google, Gemini 1.5 Flash offers significant improvements in quality and speed, notably in reasoning and image understanding.
“We’ve greatly expanded the context window of Gemini Advanced, now quadrupling it to 32K tokens. This allows for longer, more complex conversations and questions—all at no charge,” the company announced on Thursday.
