ChatGPT’s Search Feature May Potentially Challenge Google Search

Today, if you have something to search you’re most certainly heading to Google Search (unless you’re the minority that uses Bing or other more obscure alternatives). However, Google’s search dominance may be facing competition from OpenAI – the leading horse in the AI race – as the company is testing a search feature similar to how search engines work.

Bloomberg reports that OpenAI is currently developing this feature which searches the web for any user queries, with citations to match (similar to how Microsoft’s Copilot AI works, which is powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo model). The outlet describes one version of the search feature capable of presenting images along with its text responses as needed, which can be useful for presenting a diagram, to name an example.

Technically speaking, ChatGPT already has the capability to generate responses and cite sources, but the current implementation, even in the paid tiers, often comes with factually incorrect responses (the technical term for it is “hallucination”). The search feature, in this case, will be optimized to avoid such cases from happening. As Engadget points out, @DataChaz on X (Twitter) has found a subdomain search.chatgpt.com registered, though currently unused.

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Image: @DataChaz (X/Twitter)

Of course, Google isn’t sitting still – the search engine giant is very determined to protect its bread-and-butter and has since been testing a next-generation search engine dubbed Search Generative Experience (SGE) featuring deeper integration of its generative AI capabilities.

Pokdepinion: Imagine the search engine is no longer Google, but now ChatGPT. Google will do everything to make sure it maintains search engine dominance, but EU’s DMA laws may give ChatGPT a good shot at challenging the status quo.