SearchGPT? OpenAI might be Building a New Search Engine

OpenAI is reportedly launching its own search engine powered by AI, which might be called ‘SearchGPT, poses a challenge to Google’s long-standing search engine dominance. Rumours suggest that an official announcement regarding this search engine soon.

Highlights:

• OpenAI is rumoured to launch ‘SearchGPT,’ an AI-powered search engine based on ChatGPT’s technology.
• ‘SearchGPT’ will allegedly offer an ‘image search,’ various widgets, and the option for follow-up questions, similar to Perplexity AI.
• Rumours came after users found the registration of ‘search.chatgpt.com’ and ChatGPT’s domain name changed to ‘chatgpt.com.’

Is SearchGPT Coming Soon?

Google has asserted its dominance in the search engine domain for more than 2 decades, with 90% of global searches. However, OpenAI is trying to threaten this power with a potential new AI-powered search engine. This engine will work on the underlying technology of its large language model: ChatGPT.

Rumors about a ChatGPT search engine codenamed “Sonic” have been circulating online. These rumours came about due to a video preview of SearchGPT posted on X on 28 April by a well-known web developer Tibor Blaho. 

Blaho works on his own ChatGPT interface and has previously revealed unannounced features several times in the past, at times weeks before their launch.

This shows that the search engine will present results in a chat window similar to ChatGPT’s current interface, with tabs for sources and images at the top of the screen.

There are very few details available about this rumoured OpenAI search engine. It is believed to be designed around natural language interactions, allowing users to pose queries and engage with an AI model conversationally.

In addition to the text-based search, “SearchGPT” will supposedly offer an “image search,” various widgets for weather, calculators, sports, finance, and time zones, as well as the option of follow-up questions, similar to the LLM search engine Perplexity.

The tweet above also shows a preview of the weather widget assets and favicons that will be used in Sonic (SearchGPT)

According to Blaho, the language model that will be used for SearchGPT is either GPT-4 Lite (codenamed “Scallion” or “POR”), GPT-4, or GPT-3.5 (“Sahara-V”). There is also speculation that GPT-4 Lite could be the recently tested gpt-2 model in the chatbot arena. OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman also tweeted cryptically about it.

Few Signs that point towards SearchGPT

It is widely known that OpenAI is actively developing a large language model focused on search capabilities. The company’s CEO openly expressed his interest in such a project, describing it as highly intriguing. Earlier this year, in February, news platform The Information leaked the first details about a possible OpenAI web search platform. 

OpenAI has recently taken steps towards this like making links in ChatGPT more visible as sources. These small changes suggest that the company is gradually laying the groundwork for a search engine.

In an episode of the Lex Fridman podcast conducted in March, Sam Altman suggested that ChatGPT could be the future of search with integration between large language models and search functionalities.

“If we can build a better search engine than Google then we should. Google shows you 13 ads and ten blue links, which is one way to find information, but the thing that is exciting to me is that maybe there is a much better way to help people find and act on information. Maybe it is interesting to say ‘How do we help you find the information you need, how do we help create that in some cases or point you to it in others‘. The intersection of LLMs plus search I don’t think anyone has cracked the code on yet. I would love to go and do that, I think it would be cool.”

Over the past weeks, there have been three indications that OpenAI might be planning to launch its own search engine soon. The first clue emerged when the domain “search.chatgpt.com” started appearing in log files for some servers.

The second hint came from business-oriented rumours circulating yesterday, suggesting that OpenAI could unveil a search engine on May 9th.

Adding weight to these speculations, Ashutosh Shrivastava, an AI developer shared a screenshot on X revealing that recent SSL certificate logs from OpenAI contained the domain “search.chatgpt.com.” He interpreted this as a potential sign that OpenAI might be developing search functionality.

The registration of search.chatgpt.com also led to speculation about SearchGPT being launched very soon.

The final indication comes from ChatGPT’s domain name change. Likely in preparation for the new search product, ChatGPT is now available at chatgpt.com instead of chat.openai.com.

How would SearchGPT benefit users?

According to all the talk online, SearchGPT will be similar to Google Gemini or Perplexity AI – integrated into ChatGPT but with access to live data. Users could ask about the latest news or top song charts, and SearchGPT would provide up-to-date results without any lag.

This would address a major limitation of current language models – their knowledge cutoff dates. These cutoff dates refer to the timeframe of data used for training, so any information after that may be inaccurate or missing in the model’s responses.

By giving ChatGPT live web access through SearchGPT, OpenAI could solve the cutoff date issue, putting it on par with Gemini.

Combining AI with search allows real-time updates while retaining chatbot benefits like follow-up questions and paraphrasing.

Conclusion

While many details about ‘SearchGPT’ remain unknown, the prospect of OpenAI combining its powerful AI models with live search capabilities holds immense potential. By integrating up-to-date web data with ChatGPT’s conversational abilities, ‘SearchGPT’ could revolutionize information access and challenge Google’s long-standing search engine dominance.