Google Search has needed to be disrupted, for years. SearchGPT is a new AI search engine that has the potentials to do that.
SearchGPT is OpenAI’s long-awaited answer to Google Search. It is an AI search engine powered by the GPT-4 model family with real-time summarized information from the web with links to relevant sources, so users can click through to go read up in details.
The juicy part of this new AI search engine, it is that it gives you answers with relevant sources. This means, it includes links back to the websites that it pulls its answers from. This is similar to how Microsoft’s Copilot AI chat works. As a Web publisher, I love this approach that values, respects, and protects my hard work. I imagine that many other publishers will appreciate it too.
What stands out in the press release from OpenAI is that it says thy want to enhance the conversational capabilities of their AI chats with real-time information from the Web. This is significant. If you have used ChatGPT and some other AI chatbots, you will be all too familiar with how the information presented in response to your questions and prompts is often out of date – years old. By incorporating the ability to respond with real-time information, along with recognition of context and nuances, what we have is a powerful modern search engine that anyone will enjoy using.
It isn’t news that Google Search has been a monopoly for a long time. No other search engine has come close to it in terms of reach and scale, and that needs to change. I do not want Google Search to die. Replacing one monopoly with another is counterproductive. But like many other people, I want there to be an alternative that matches it in terms of power and scale. Having everyone dependent on the whims and caprices of only one player in a field is always a bad idea. History has proven that again and again.
In recent times, online journalism and Web publishing has taken a hit from Google Search’s unpredictability. Overnight, thousands of Web publishers had valuable traffic that they built up from years of work wiped out. I have seen the devastation that some of them have had to deal with. It has been a bloodbath. That has to change, and it can’t as long as Google remains a monopoly in the world of Web search.
If there is any technology that provides the needed leverage for Google to have serious competition, it is artificial intelligence (AI), and if there is one AI company that has a good chance of pulling it off, it is OpenAI, the developers of SearchGPT. Yahoo once was the top search engine. It got disrupted. Nobody stays on top forever. Even almighty Google can and will be disrupted, and I can’t wait for the day it will happen, because right now, the search giant is messing too many things up.
OpenAI says that SearchGPT will quickly and directly respond to your questions with up-to-date information from the web while giving you clear links to relevant sources. Fabulous. Music to my ears. In addition, you will be able to ask follow-up questions, like you would in a conversation with a person, with the shared context building with each query. Exactly as search should be – a natural interaction between the user and the search engine.
SearchGPT is currently in beta state, and OpenAI is currently testing it with a small group of users and publishers to get feedback to improve the service. The objective is to eventually integrate this new search engine into ChatGPT.
It is clear that OpenAI is looking to improve how ChatGPat works to benefit everyone – those searching for answers and the publishers that work hard to provide those answers. I look forward to seeing SearchGPT get it right and succeed.
Remember that OpenAI says SearchGPT is a temporary prototype. Again, that means it won’t exist separately but the features will be incorporated elsewhere – into ChatGPT. To join the waitlist, click here.
