OpenAI has finally launched its AI search engine called SearchGPT. With this, the ChatGPT maker will try to take on Google Search. While there was some chatter about OpenAI working on a search engine for some time, now that it’s here, let’s check out how it works and how to access it.
What is OpenAI SearchGPT and how it works
SearchGPT is a search engine powered by AI. You get a large search box, wherein you can enter “what are you looking for”. You will directly get an answer to your query instead of search results like in a traditional search engine. The answer will be detailed, step-by-step and even with related images.
It uses AI (Natural Language Processing and the in-house GPT Large Language Models) to understand the context and intent behind your query and accordingly give you an answer. For this answer, it scans web results and summarises the relevant results.
OpenAI assures it will provide links to the relevant sources next to every piece of information derived from the web. You can find more related results with source links in a sidebar.
As already mentioned, the answer will be aided by related visual elements like images, video clips, etc.
Since all of this interaction with the SearchGPT takes place in a chatbot-like interface, you can ask follow-up questions and converse with the bot regarding the topic/query. In future, it will be baked into ChatGPT which should make it easier to access.
Speaking of access:
SearchGPT availability
SearchGPT is a prototype and therefore is currently walled behind a waitlist. You can sign up for the SearchGPT waitlist here and get intimation by mail once it is available.
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When we get access, we will test it to see how it compares to Google Search’s AI Overviews and Perplexity search engine. The latter two are currently available to the public.
