Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
OpenAI has rolled out its online search tool in ChatGPT as competition grows among Big Tech rivals developing AI-driven results to queries.
The San Francisco-based company has integrated the ability to search the web into its flagship chatbot, which will be released gradually in the coming weeks, starting with some paid users on Thursday.
“Getting useful answers on the web can take a lot of effort. It often requires multiple searches and digging through links to find quality sources and the right information for you. Now, chat can get you to a better answer: Ask a question in a more natural, conversational way, and ChatGPT will respond with information from the web,” OpenAI said in a blog post on Thursday.
ChatGPT will combine its existing text responses with live online results, such as sports scores, news, the weather and stock prices. It will automatically search the web based on a user’s question.
The move is a direct challenge to Google, the market leader in online search. Google this week announced that it would expand its AI Overviews feature in its search engine, which provides summaries of results using its Gemini AI model.
Another AI-driven search engine that is gaining traction is the two-year-old start-up Perplexity, which uses models made by OpenAI and Anthropic. It is in talks to raise $1bn at a $8bn valuation, which would be its fourth raise this year.
Microsoft was one of the first Big Tech groups to add AI to its search, Bing, and has slowly started to gain more share in search advertising. Meta is also reportedly working on its own AI search function, and Anthropic recently enabled its AI to conduct online searches.
One of the drawbacks to the large language models underpinning these models is their tendency to “hallucinate”, or state inaccuracies as facts. Companies building search engines on top of these are trying to counteract this and build consumer trust by including citations to the sources of information. OpenAI’s new search will also link to sources and provide longer answers for more context.
The feature, which debuted as a prototype earlier this year called SearchGPT, was developed using feedback from publishers with which OpenAI has signed deals to use their content, including the Financial Times, Axel Springer and Condé Nast.
OpenAI said it plans to improve the function in areas such as shopping and travel and add voice capabilities.
Read the full article here
