FT: OpenAI to launch ‘SearchGPT’ in challenge to Google’s $175bn lockhold

OpenAI, backed by Microsoft, has introduced a new search tool, SearchGPT, challenging Google's $175bn search business. Unlike traditional search engines, SearchGPT offers a stream of links, pulling from web sources even if they're not in its training data. Currently in limited testing with a 10,000-person waitlist, this move aims to reshape AI search and intensify the competition with Google's established dominance in the search market..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here..Join us for BizNews' first investment-focused conference on Thursday, 12 September, in Hermanus, featuring top experts like Frans Cronje, Piet Viljoen, and more. Get insights on electricity and exploiting SA's gas bounty from new and familiar faces. Register here..By Madhumita Murgia in London and George Hammond in San Francisco.Microsoft-backed group unveils prototype search tool, targeting rival's $175bn-a-year search business .___STEADY_PAYWALL___.OpenAI is launching an online search tool in a direct challenge to Google, opening up a new front in the tech industry's race to commercialise advances in generative artificial intelligence..The experimental product, known as SearchGPT, will initially only be available to a small group of users, with the San Francisco-based company opening a 10,000-person waiting list to test the service on Thursday..The product is visually distinct from ChatGPT as it goes beyond generating a single answer by offering a rail of links — similar to a search engine — that allows users to click through to external websites. .SearchGPT was developed with feedback from publishers that OpenAI has recently signed deals with, including News Corp, Axel Springer and the Financial Times..Read more: OpenAI's game-changing search product to rival Google and Perplexity.OpenAI, which is backed with $13bn investment from Microsoft — Google's biggest rival in AI over recent years — aims to eventually reintegrate the AI search features into its flagship chatbot. .The move is the latest effort by OpenAI, which has led the way in the early race to build powerful AI chatbots, to take on Google, which has dominated online search for the past two decades.The rise of generative AI and the battle over the future of the search market could transform the trajectory of both companies, as Google seeks to defend its profit margins while OpenAI hunts new revenue streams..The search giant has built up a cash cow that brought in $175bn of revenues last year, worth more than half of its total sales. Advances in AI have opened the way for competitors including Perplexity, a two-year-old start-up billing itself as an "answer engine" that has shot to a $1bn valuation. .Google has been slow to pivot its search engine towards generative AI but, in May, US users began to see an "AI Overview" — a brief AI-generated summary answer to queries — at the top of many common search results, followed by clickable links interspersed with advertisements lower down..These kinds of search results, which include an "AI-powered snapshot", are more costly for Google to serve up than its traditional responses because generative AI consumes more computing resources..The Financial Times reported in April that Google has considered charging for "premium" search features powered by generative AI, in what would be the biggest ever shake-up of its business model..For OpenAI, the big challenge with AI-generated search so far is that chatbots like ChatGPT are prone to responding inaccurately, or "hallucinating" facts, numbers and references..This is, in part, because the highly complex models that underpin the chatbot are trained to predict patterns in language, not to crawl, index and surface information on the web like traditional search engines. .Google's AI overviews have faced similar issues. When the feature was first rolled out in US search results, they told users that eating rocks could be healthy, advised them to glue cheese to pizza and described former US president Barack Obama as a Muslim..SearchGPT will instead "provide up-to-date information from the web while giving you clear links to relevant sources", according to OpenAI. The new search tool will be able to access sites even if they have opted out of training OpenAI's generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT..AI companies have caused controversy among news publishers, who have accused tech companies of breaching copyright by scraping data from websites and regurgitating sections of articles without attribution..The New York Times sued OpenAI and its main backer Microsoft last year for "profit[ing] from the massive copyright infringement, commercial exploitation and misappropriation of The Times's intellectual property", claims which OpenAI refutes. .Amid the conflict, the start-up has built licensing relationships with several publishers, which it said has tested and designed the search tool with publishers' product teams.."[OpenAI] innately understand that for AI-powered search to be effective, it must be founded on the highest quality, most reliable information furnished by trusted sources," said Robert Thomson, chief executive of News Corp..Read also:.🔒 OpenAI hostages: AI bulls concerned over ChatGPT dependency – Paul J. Davies🔒 Beware OpenAI's engagement-based GPT Store model – Parmy OlsonOpenAI's Voice Engine: Ethical dilemmas in innovation – Parmy Olson.© 2024 The Financial Times Ltd

FT: OpenAI to launch ‘SearchGPT’ in challenge to Google’s $175bn lockhold

Related Stories

New Fed chair Warsh faces inflation and Trump pressure

The R24 billion debt crisis ruining SA universities

Middle East tensions threaten first SA rate hike since 2023

UK demographic crisis: Birth rates hit historic lows