OpenAI launches ChatGPT search, competing with Google and Microsoft

OpenAI on Thursday launched a search feature within ChatGPT, its viral chatbot, that positions the high-powered artificial intelligence startup to better compete with search engines like Google, Microsoft‘s Bing and Perplexity.

ChatGPT search offers up-to-the-minute sports scores, stock quotes, news, weather and more, powered by real-time web search and partnerships with news and data providers, according to the company. It began beta-testing the search engine, called SearchGPT, in July.

The release could have implications for Google as the 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. 

Shares of Alphabet were down about 1% following the news.

The move also positions OpenAI as more of a competitor to Microsoft and its businesses. Microsoft has invested close to $14 billion in OpenAI, yet OpenAI’s products directly compete with Microsoft’s AI and search tools, such as Copilot and Bing.

In a Reddit AMA Thursday, OpenAI’s engineering VP, Srinivas Narayanan, answered a user question about whether ChatGPT search used Bing as the search engine behind the scenes, writing, “We use a set of services and Bing is an important one.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote Thursday in a post on X that search is his “favorite feature we have launched” in ChatGPT since the chatbot’s original debut.

OpenAI says users can “search in a more natural, intuitive way” and ask follow-up questions “just like you would in a conversation.” The search model is a fine-tuned version of OpenAI’s most powerful AI model yet, GPT-4o, and is fueled in part by third-party search providers and content provided by news industry partners.

“I find it to be a way faster/easier way to get the information I’m looking for,” Altman said Thursday during the Reddit AMA. “I think we’ll see this especially for queries that require more complex research. I also look forward to a future where a search query can dynamically render a custom web page in response!”

OpenAI wrote in a Thursday blog post that it used feedback from its SearchGPT prototype to build out the feature and that it plans to “keep improving search, particularly in areas like shopping and travel, and leverage the reasoning capabilities of the OpenAI o1 series to do deeper research.”

ChatGPT will “automatically search the web based on what you ask,” according to an OpenAI blog post. Users can manually click the web search icon within ChatGPT to search if they choose.

Chats now include links to sources like articles or blog posts, which users can access by clicking the “Sources” button below the response to open a sidebar. OpenAI said it collaborated with its news partners, including The Associated Press, Reuters, Axel Springer, Condé Nast, Hearst, Dotdash Meredith, the Financial Times, News Corp., Le Monde, The Atlantic, Time and Vox Media.

All ChatGPT Plus and Team users, as well as members of SearchGPT’s waitlist, can access ChatGPT search starting Thursday, according to an OpenAI blog post. ChatGPT Enterprise and Edu users will get access in the next few weeks, and the product will roll out to users of ChatGPT’s free version “over the coming months,” per OpenAI.

OpenAI closed its latest funding round earlier this month at a valuation of $157 billion, including the $6.6 billion the company raised from an extensive roster of investment firms and Big Tech companies. It also received a $4 billion revolving line of credit, bringing its total liquidity to more than $10 billion. OpenAI expects about $5 billion in losses on $3.7 billion in revenue this year, CNBC confirmed in September with a person familiar with the situation.

OpenAI has in recent months experienced some controversy around its upcoming transition to a for-profit structure, as well as a string of executive departures. Jan Leike, a former safety team leader at the company, wrote on X while resigning that “safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products” at the company.