Athira Sethu
Kochi, 1 Nov 2024
OpenAI announced a huge improvement in its chatbot, ChatGPT, that would permit it to function more like a search engine. This change aims to dispute Google’s long-standing dominance in web search.
Now, the users get quick, up-to-date answers along with links to relevant web sources. This feature means you do not need to rely only on traditional search engines to get the information. It allows an update for pulling real-time data from the internet for ChatGPT.
The new ChatGPT homepage now boasts buttons that take users straight to the latest information on offer – whether that be weather forecasts, stock quotes, game scores, or breaking news. Content comes from respected publications, namely France’s Le Monde, Germany’s Axel Springer, and UK’s Financial Times, with which OpenAI has partnered.
Its new look is just like that of Google’s search results but free of ads, hence clean and more convenient. It also mirrors Perplexity, an AI-based search engine providing answers in a more conversational manner with sources being quoted.
However, presently, both OpenAI and Perplexity are involved in a lawsuit with the New York Times for using and linking to copyrighted material.
To build its standalone search technology, OpenAI has introduced it directly in ChatGPT for subscribed users only. Future versions for the free users will also reach this service. Users could then turn search on to be automatically enabled or tap a web search icon for a manual engagement with the service.
Although OpenAI has said that any website can opt to be included in search results through ChatGPT, the company is looking for feedback from content creators to make improvements to the system.
An earlier weakness of AI chatbots like ChatGPT in particular has been that often outdated information was being fed since they are time cut-offs. This upgrade eliminates all that by giving real current data, a major thing Google and Microsoft had had strength in, which combined its AI responses with live web results.
The new search feature does not have ads. This way, ChatGPT is able to return cleaner results compared to Google. OpenAI’s Chief Executive Sam Altman commented that his favorite addition to ChatGPT since the latter’s launch in 2022 was the search feature. According to him, it makes it possible to get information faster and easier.
That raises questions about OpenAI’s relationship with Microsoft, a big investor that also is seeking to grow its Bing search engine as a rival to Google. Altman wants to make OpenAI a major internet player.
Though making the company more appealing to users by improving search capabilities would be a good direction, it would also inflate the company’s computing needs and expenses, which already are enormous.
