OpenAI just went live with its own search engine within ChatGPT

In a significant development for the search industry, OpenAI has announced the integration of web search capabilities into ChatGPT. The feature, which launches today for paid subscribers and SearchGPT waitlist users, transforms the AI chatbot into a real-time search tool that could reshape how we access information online.

"ChatGPT can now search the web in a much better way than before", OpenAI announced in their blog post. "You can get fast, timely answers with links to relevant web sources, which you would have previously needed to go to a search engine for".

Rather than creating a separate search product, OpenAI has chosen to embed the functionality directly within ChatGPT's familiar interface. The system will automatically determine when to utilise web results based on user queries, though manual activation remains an option through a dedicated web search icon.

The company acknowledges the current challenges in web searches, noting that "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".

The move, which had been anticipated since reports emerged in May 2024, represents a direct challenge to Google's long-standing dominance in the search market. This integration represents a fascinating shift in how we might interact with online information. Since Google's emergence in the late 1990s, we've grown accustomed to typing keywords into a search bar and sifting through pages of results. ChatGPT's approach fundamentally alters this paradigm, allowing users to have natural conversations that seamlessly incorporate real-time web data.

The technical underpinning of this new feature is particularly noteworthy. According to OpenAI, "the search model is a fine-tuned version of GPT-4o, post-trained using novel synthetic data generation techniques, including distilling outputs from OpenAI o1-preview". The company has also established partnerships with news and data providers to enhance coverage of specific categories like weather, stocks, sports, news and maps.

For the everyday user, this means less time spent jumping between multiple search results and manually compiling information. Instead, as OpenAI explains, users can "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".

The company also collaborated extensively with the news industry, taking feedback from its global publisher partners, including Associated Press, Axel Springer, Condé Nast, Dotdash Meredith, Financial Times, GEDI, Hearst, Le Monde, News Corp, Prisa (El País), Reuters, The Atlantic, Time, and Vox Media.

Looking ahead, OpenAI has outlined ambitious plans: "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". The feature will eventually expand to Advanced Voice and canvas features, with a broader rollout to free users planned for the coming months.