OpenAI has beefed up its ChatGPT generative AI chatbot with search engine capabilities, as the startup takes on Google’s decades-long dominance of web search.
The upgrade enables users to receive “fast, timely answers” with links to relevant web sources — information that previously required using a traditional search engine, the company said.
The significant upgrade to ChatGPT enables the AI chatbot to provide real-time information from across the web.
ChatGPT’s homepage can now also offer direct tabs to sourced material on topics ranging from weather forecasts and stock prices to sports scores and breaking news, the company said.
These would link to news and data from providers that have signed content deals with OpenAI, including France’s Le Monde, Germany’s Axel Springer and the United Kingdom’s Financial Times.
Examples of the new interface shown on the OpenAI website closely resembled search results on Google and Google Maps, though without the clutter of advertising.
Rather than launching a separate product, OpenAI has integrated search directly into ChatGPT for paying subscribers, though this will be expanded to users that use the free version of the chatbot.
Users can enable the search feature by default or activate it manually via a web search icon.
The company added that any website or publisher can opt-in to appear in ChatGPT’s search results, with OpenAI actively seeking feedback from content creators to refine the system further.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote Thursday on X that search is his “favorite feature we have launched” on ChatGPT since the bot’s debut in 2022.
“I find it to be a way faster/easier way to get the information I’m looking for,” Altman added on Reddit.