OpenAI has announced the launch of a ChatGPT-powered search engine that is set to compete directly with Google, potentially impacting the flow of internet traffic for news, sports scores, and other real-time information. The San Francisco-based company revealed that the search feature will initially be available to paid users of ChatGPT, with plans to extend it to all users in the future. A preview version was introduced to a limited group of users and publishers back in July.
The original iteration of ChatGPT, which was introduced in 2022, was trained on extensive collections of online texts but lacked the ability to respond to queries about current events not included in its training data. Google recently revamped its search engine by incorporating AI-generated written summaries into search results, aiming to provide quick answers to user queries without the need to click on external links for more information.
However, concerns have been raised about the potential spread of misinformation when relying on AI chatbots for information retrieval, as errors known as hallucinations can occur. Some news media organizations have expressed alarm over AI companies shifting towards having chatbots deliver news sourced from professional journalists. Legal action has been taken by several news outlets, including The New York Times, against OpenAI and its partner Microsoft for alleged copyright infringement. Similarly, News Corp, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal and New York Post, filed a lawsuit against another AI search engine, Perplexity, in October.
OpenAI disclosed in a recent blog post that its new search engine was developed in collaboration with news partners such as The Associated Press and News Corp. The search engine will provide links to various sources, including news articles and blog posts. However, it remains unclear whether these links will lead to the original sources of the information presented by the chatbot.
It is worth noting that The Associated Press and OpenAI have an existing licensing and technology agreement that grants OpenAI access to a portion of AP's text archives.
