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OpenAI aims at a new market with ChatGPT search
OpenAI introduces new capability in its AI Chatbot. While the vendor has gained favor and popularity with its chatbot, it has had problems maintaining the trust of users.
OpenAI launched ChatGPT Search a few months after introducing its SearchGPT prototype,
The AI vendor on Oct. 31 introduced the new feature to ChatGPT Plus and Team users and SearchGPT waitlist users. Enterprise and educational users will get access in the coming weeks, OpenAI said.
With the new feature, users receive answers to their questions with links to relevant web sources. ChatGPT will search the web based on what users ask, or users can manually click the web search icon, the vendor said.
The OpenAI move is another example of the search market heating up as many vendors find new opportunities to reinvent search with generative AI technology.
Social media giant Meta recently joined the trend by planning to add search to its AI chatbot.
Meanwhile, search giant Google is fighting to stay in the lead with its AI Overviews.
An opportunity
However, AI Overviews has not immediately appeared to have the desired success Google hoped it would have, opening the door for OpenAI, said Forrester Research analyst Nikhil Lai.
"There is a window of opportunity right now for OpenAI to seize on," Lai said.
Also, with OpenAI's partnership with Microsoft, the AI vendor has access to Bing's search index, which is considered capable, although not as good as Google's.
"ChatGPT search is going to be as reliable as Bing," Lai said.
ChatGPT search is also attractive because of the lack of ads on the platform, Lai added.
"The information is all organic and less salesy, less commercial, because OpenAI only has an incentive to deliver relevant information to you, not to distract you from what you're doing, to try to get you to buy things," he said. "This is going to accelerate the adoption of conversational search."
However, Google is also refining its search strategy.
Also on Oct 31, the cloud provider rolled out Grounding with Google Search in Google AI Studio and the Gemini API.
The feature enables developers to get more accurate responses from Google's Gemini LLM models aided by Google Search.
The model also comes up with in-line supporting links and user search suggestions.
The trust problem
Both Google and OpenAI are seeking to address one of the major challenges with generative AI: trust.
"Both announcements acknowledge that generative AI will not be trusted and branded as being safe for use until it consistently returns accurate and complete responses, and also provides a way to verify where the information is sourced," said Futurum Group analyst Keith Kirkpatrick.
Google does this by highlighting the usefulness of grounding for reducing hallucinations, bringing transparency to AI applications, and making them trustworthy.
OpenAI also provides transparency with links to articles and blog posts and with the partnerships the AI vendor maintains with news and data providers like AP News, Financial Times and Reuters.
"Because the validity of source data -- particularly around hot-button topics -- is often debated, this more transparent approach of providing in-line citations will help provide much-needed transparency," Kirkpatrick said.
Nevertheless, the popularity of ChatGPT doesn’t compare with the confidence many have in Google searches, Lai said.
"The trust that Google has with publishers and with users is tremendous and OpenAI is nowhere near that level of trust," Lai said. He added that many consumers are still verifying ChatGPT's responses with Google.
Also, OpenAI's credibility has been tested with challenges such as The New York Times lawsuit against it for allegedly infringing on the Times’ copyrighted material.
"That's the big challenge for any search engine other than Google," Lai said.
OpenAI plans to roll out ChatGPT Search for free in the coming months.
Esther Ajao is a TechTarget Editorial news writer and podcast host covering artificial intelligence software and systems.
