OpenAI
on
Thursday
announced
a
prototype
of
its
search
engine,
called
SearchGPT,
which
aims
to
give
users
“fast
and
timely
answers
with
clear
and
relevant
sources.”
The
company
said
it
eventually
plans
to
integrate
the
tool,
which
is
currently
being
tested
with
a
small
group
of
users,
into
its
ChatGPT
chatbot.
The
rollout
could
have
implications
for
Google
and
its
dominant
search
engine.
Since
the
launch
of
ChatGPT
in
November
2022,
Alphabet
investors
have
been
concerned
that
OpenAI
could
take
market
share
from
Google
in
search
by
giving
consumers
new
ways
to
seek
information
online.
With
this
prototype,
OpenAI
is
testing
the
waters
for
doing
just
that,
promising
users
the
chance
to
“search
in
a
more
natural,
intuitive
way”
and
ask
follow-up
questions
“just
like
you
would
in
a
conversation.”
“We
think
there
is
room
to
make
search
much
better
than
it
is
today,”
OpenAI
CEO
Sam
Altman
wrote
Thursday
in
a
post
on
X.
Alphabet
shares
fell
more
than
3%
on
Thursday
to
close
at
$167.28,
while
the
Nasdaq
was
down
less
than
1%.
In
May,
Google
launched AI
Overview,
which
CEO Sundar
Pichai called
the
biggest
change
in
search
in
25
years,
to
a
limited
audience,
allowing
users
to
see
a
summary
of
answers
to
queries
at
the
very
top
of
Google
Search.
Though
Google
had
been
working
on
AI
Overview
for
more
than
a
year, public
criticism
mounted
after
users
quickly
noticed
that
queries
returned
nonsensical
or
inaccurate
results
within
the
AI
feature
—
without
any
way
to
opt
out.
“Google
has
been
kind
of
shaking
in
their
boots
a
little
bit
since
this
stuff
first
popped
off,”
said
Daniel
Faggella,
founder
and
head
of
research
at
Emerj
Artificial
Intelligence
Research,
referring
to
generative
artificial
intelligence.
“We
haven’t
seem
their
company
crumble
in
the
interim,
but
we
have
seen
them
kind
of
fumble.”
The
SearchGPT
announcement
follows
OpenAI’s
launch
last
Thursday
of
a
new AI model,
“GPT-4o
mini.”
The
new
model
is
an
offshoot
of
GPT-4o,
the
startup’s
fastest
and
most
powerful
model
to
date,
which
it
launched
in
May
during
a livestreamed
event
with
executives.
OpenAI,
backed
by Microsoft,
has
been
valued
at
more
than
$80
billion
by
investors.
The
company,
founded
in
2015,
is
under
pressure
to
stay
on
top
of
the
generative
AI
market
while
finding
ways
to
make
money
as
it
spends
massive
sums
on
processors
and
infrastructure
to
build
and
train
its
models.
Last
Month,
OpenAI
announced
the
hiring
of
two
top
executives
as
well
as
a
partnership
with Apple that
includes
a
ChatGPT-Siri
integration.
Sarah
Friar,
previously
CEO
of
Nextdoor
and
finance
chief
at
Square,
joined
as
chief
financial
officer,
and
Kevin
Weil,
an
ex-president
at Planet
Labs
and
former
senior
vice
president
at
Twitter
and
a
vice
president
at
Facebook
and
Instagram,
joined
as
chief
product
officer.
OpenAI
is
bolstering
its
C-suite
as
its
large
language
models
gain
importance
across
the
tech
sector
and
as
competition
rapidly
emerges
in
the
burgeoning
generative
AI
market.
Both
OpenAI’s
new
mini
AI
model
and
the
prototype
of
SearchGPT
are
also
part
of
the
company’s
push
to
be
at
the
forefront
of
“multimodality,”
or
the
ability
to
offer
a
wide
range
of
types
of
AI-generated
media,
like
text,
images,
audio,
video
and
search,
inside
one
tool:
ChatGPT.
For
SearchGPT,
OpenAI’s
blog
post
said
the
tool’s
visual
results
will
lead
to
“richer
understanding”
for
users.
Last
year,
OpenAI
Chief
Operating
Officer
Brad
Lightcap told
CNBC,
“The
world
is
multimodal.”
He
added
that
as
humans
“engage
with
the
world,
we
see
things,
we
hear
things,
we
say
things,”
so
limiting
interactions
to
text
is
insufficient.
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