OpenAI today previewed SearchGPT, a new search engine powered by its artificial intelligence technology.

The company described the service as a “temporary prototype” in a blog post. According to OpenAI, the plan is to collect feedback about SearchGPT from a group of initial adopters and then integrate the best features into ChatGPT. That suggests the search engine won’t remain available as a standalone offering in the long term.

SearchGPT is built around a standard search box that takes natural language queries as input. When it receives a prompt, the service doesn’t return a list of relevant webpages but rather AI-generated text intended to directly answer the user’s question. According to OpenAI, SearchGPT cites the webpage on which a prompt response is based with a link placed in parentheses at the end of the text.

The responses that the service generates vary based on the query. A simple question might prompt SearchGPT to display a single-sentence answer. In other cases, it may output multiple paragraphs or a list. Some SearchGPT responses include not only text but also images and a related content sidebar with links to relevant webpages.

SearchGPT supports followup questions. According to OpenAI, the service doesn’t simply answer the additional queries entered by the user but also takes into account the earlier requests that preceded them. That context can help the underlying AI models generate more relevant output. 

For publishers, OpenAI is rolling out features that will make it possible to manage how copyrighted content is used by SearchGPT. The company didn’t specify how the features will work. It did divulge that publishers may opt not to have their articles used for AI training, but still include that content in SearchGPT search results.

“We think there is room to make search much better than it is today,” OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman wrote on X. “We will learn from the prototype, make it better, and then integrate the tech into ChatGPT to make it real-time and maximally helpful.”

The company didn’t specify if the planned search feature will require a paid ChatGPT subscription or is set to become available for free. If SearchGPT were to be incorporated into ChatGPT’s free version, it could create more competition for Microsoft Corp.’s Bing, which is also powered by language models from OpenAI. Microsoft has provided OpenAI with more than $10 billion worth of cloud infrastructure and funding to support its work.

SearchGPT could potentially also create more competition for Google LLC. Earlier this year, the Alphabet Inc. unit equipped its search engine with a feature called AI Overviews that can directly answer user questions similarly to OpenAI’s new service.

It’s unclear how the ChatGPT developer plans to make money from its search technology. After integrating SearchGPT into ChatGPT, OpenAI might attempt to embed ads into the prompt answers the tool generates. Alternatively, OpenAI could develop a paid enterprise version to help workers navigate business data repositories.

Image: OpenAI