OpenAI is set to unveil a ChatGPT feature that can crawl the web, similar to a search engine. Google had better watch out.
Pulling the rug out from under Google
According to Reuters, OpenAI chose this Monday, May 13 to present its new product. A date that is far from random, the Google I/O conference being held a day later. The Mountain View firm is reportedly preparing to reveal numerous tools powered by artificial intelligence (AI) during the event. This news is enough to plunge the online search giant back a year, when OpenAI’s advances in AI triggered a state of internal alarm.
The feature should allow users to ask ChatGPT a question and receive answers from across the Internet, from sources like Wikipedia or news headlines. One version of the product also uses images alongside written responses, where relevant. Currently, the chatbot provides sometimes outdated responses, with its training data going back to 2022.
Research represents a new opportunity for OpenAI. The company is seeking to diversify its sources of revenue, in order to offset the exorbitant cost of generative artificial intelligence tools. To carry out her project, she allegedly tried to poach employees from Google.
The potential of AI in online search
Microsoft quickly capitalized on OpenAI’s technology by integrating it into its Bing search engine. Google is also exploring the possibility of integrating AI into Search, the core of its business. For the moment, however, the right formula has not yet been found by the company, in particular due to advertisers and brands: the responses generated by AI prevent the user from clicking on links during searches , which leads to a significant drop in traffic. It plans to charge for certain features to solve this new problem.
The start-up Perplexity, valued at $1 billion and founded by a former OpenAI researcher in 2022, offers a search interface powered by AI. It has 10 million monthly active users, demonstrating the attraction of Internet users for this type of tool.
The OpenAI project has already been spotted by several users of X, formerly Twitter. Some people have recently noticed the existence of the page search.chatgpt.com, although it says “ not found » is displayed when it is visited.
