ChatGPT search officially launches

Some ChatGPT users can now search the web with ChatGPT search, OpenAI announced today.

ChatGPT has been able to search the web for several months, but today’s update is part of OpenAI’s larger push into AI search.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT search has an opportunity to challenge Google’s search monopoly with a much different user experience (e.g., less clutter, less search features, no ads).

Why we care. We’ve long waited to see what OpenAI’s search product. Now it’s here. While it’s too early to tell what impact ChatGPT search will have on Google, we know that SearchGPT (despite having a small user base) was already sending more referral traffic to brands than other AI engines like Perplexity and Claude.

How to search. Go to ChatGPT, click on the web search icon, and enter your query. Here’s what ChatGPT’s search icon looks like:

Categories. ChatGPT search includes up-to-date information and unique visual designs in these specific categories:

• Weather.
• Stocks.
• Sports.
• News.
• Maps.

Sources. ChatGPT search will cite its sources via inline citations and a Sources button underneath its responses (answers) to queries. Clicking the button opens a sidebar of links, called Citations.

Availability. To use ChatGPT Search, you’ll need to be a ChatGPT Plus or Team user – or be on the waitlist for SearchGPT.

• Search will become available for free ChatGPT users “over the coming months.”
• You can access search at chatgpt.com and on the desktop and mobile apps.

How it works. 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. ChatGPT search leverages third-party search providers, as well as content provided directly by our partners, to provide the information users are looking for.”

One of those third-party search providers is Microsoft Bing. Based on its ChatGPT search help document, OpenAI is sharing search query and location data with Microsoft.

Chrome Extension. You can make ChatGPT your default search engine on Chrome by downloading this Chrome Extension.

More to come. OpenAI said it plans to improve the search experience for shopping and travel queries.

What they’re saying. Varun Shetty, OpenAI’s head of media partnerships, told the Washington Post (subscription required):

• “We think it improves relevancy and decreases hallucinations, because of the ability to go out to the web.”

SearchGPT. We were expecting OpenAI to integrate SearchGPT into ChatGPT search at some point this year. For now, at least, it seems SearchGPT, announced in July, will live on as an experimental search prototype – perhaps where new ChatGPT search features are tested.

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