OpenAI’s ChatGPT search engine is now officially live

ChatGPT has now officially become an AI-powered search engine.

On Thursday, the OpenAI has launched a new feature named “ChatGPT search”. It is now positions it’s chatbot to a high-powered AI search engine to complete with Google, Bing and other search engines. This upgrade allows users to ask follow-up questions just like you would in a conversation. ChatGPT search provides updates to date real time sports scores, stock, news, weather, and more. It uses real-time web search and partnership with news and data providers.

Instead of launching a separate product, web search haas been integrated into ChatGPT’s interface. This features allows users to tap into web results based on their queries. Users can also tap into web search manually. OpenAI is rolling out these features to the paid subscribers first. ChatGPT Enterprise and Edu users will have access to this feature in the next few weeks. The free version rollout will happen in the coming months.

ChatGPT Search: How New AI-Powered Search Engine Works

ChatGPT replies to users in question-answer format. Here, you can follow up and deep dive into the subject. With ChatGPT Search answers will have clear source links and users can view the original sources page.

OpenAI has been testing this SearchGPT feature from July. This helped the company to understand how AI processes web data and source attribution works. It runs on the OpenAI’s latest GPT-4o advanced AI mode.

OpenAI said users can “search in a more natural, intuitive way” and ask follow-up questions. The way we ask questions in a conversation. This search model uses powerful AI model GPT-4o and is fueled by their party search providers and content provided by industry partners.

“ChatGPT will choose to search the web based on what you ask, or you can manually choose to search by clicking the web search icon,” OpenAI said in a blog post. “Now, chat can get you to a better answer: Ask a question in a more natural, conversational way, and ChatGPT can choose to respond with information from the web. Go deeper with follow-up questions, and ChatGPT will consider the full context of your chat to get a better answer for you.”

Now, ChatGPT search promises better highlights and attributes as information comes from trustworthy new sources and benefits audiences.

They have also mentioned that Chatbot are prone to make mistakes and sometimes make up information. This phenomenon that scientists call “hallucination”.

OpenAI Partnership with Major New Publication to Advance AI Powered Real-time Search engine

Many AI search services started to face lawsuits. News Corp, The New York Times have filled suit against AI-Powered Search startup Perplexity. The New York times has also sued OpenAI and it’s partner, Microsoft claiming copyright infringement of news content to the AI system. But, they have denied the lawsuit’s claim.

OpenAI has secured partnerships with news and data providers. This includes The Associated Press, Reuters, Condé Nast, Axel Springer, the Financial Times, Hearst, Dotdash Meredith, News Corp., The Atlantic, Time, Le Monde and Vox Media.

OpenAI said in a blog post that a new search engine is built with help from new partners. It will include links to sources such as news and blog posts.

Inside OpenAI’s Latest funding round

OpenAI closed it’s latest funding round this month at $157 billion valuation. It includes the $6.6 billion the Company raised from the investment firm and big tech companies. They have also received a $4 billion revolving line of credit. OpenAI expected $3.7 billion in revenue this year with about $5 billion in losses.

What Comes Next For SearchGPT

With all the feedback, they have brought the best of SearchGPT. They have plan to keep improving the experience of ChatGPT. They have said on a blog post, “We plan to keep improving search, particularly in areas like shopping and travel, and leverage the reasoning capabilities of the OpenAI o1 series to do deeper research.”