In a move that could shake up the search engine landscape, OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research company behind the wildly popular ChatGPT, is poised to announce its own AI-powered search product on Monday, according to sources familiar with the matter. This announcement could potentially raise the stakes in the ongoing competition with Google, the current king of online search.
The timing of OpenAI’s reveal is noteworthy, as it is expected to occur just one day before Google’s annual I/O conference, where the tech giant is anticipated to unveil a slew of AI-related products. This strategic timing suggests that OpenAI may be aiming to steal some of the limelight from its formidable rival.
OpenAI’s search product is said to be an extension of its flagship ChatGPT product, a conversational AI assistant that has garnered widespread attention and acclaim for its ability to generate human-like responses to text prompts. The new search offering will reportedly enable ChatGPT to pull in direct information from the web and include citations, according to reports from Bloomberg.
For those unfamiliar with ChatGPT, it is a chatbot (a computer program designed to simulate conversation with human users) that utilizes cutting-edge AI models developed by OpenAI. These models are trained on vast amounts of data, allowing ChatGPT to understand and generate natural language responses with remarkable fluency and coherence.
However, despite its impressive language capabilities, ChatGPT has struggled to provide accurate and real-time information from the web, as its knowledge is limited to the data it was trained on, which becomes outdated over time. OpenAI’s new search product aims to address this limitation by directly accessing and citing information from the internet, potentially making ChatGPT a more reliable and up-to-date source of information.
The announcement of OpenAI’s search product comes amid increasing competition in the AI search space. One notable competitor is Perplexity, a well-funded AI search startup founded by a former OpenAI researcher. Perplexity has gained traction by providing an AI-native search interface that displays citations, images, and text in its responses, and boasts 10 million monthly active users as of January 2023.
Meanwhile, Google, the undisputed leader in online search, has been working on integrating generative AI features into its own search engine. Generative AI refers to AI systems that can generate new content, such as text, images, or audio, based on the data they have been trained on.
The entry of OpenAI into the search market could pose a significant challenge to Google’s dominance, especially if OpenAI’s product can effectively leverage the capabilities of its advanced language models to provide more natural and intuitive search experiences.
However, OpenAI faces its own challenges in expanding its user base. Despite ChatGPT’s initial viral success, reaching 100 million monthly active users faster than any other application after its late 2022 launch, worldwide traffic to ChatGPT’s website has been on a rollercoaster ride in the past year, according to analytics firm Similarweb. The AI company is now under pressure to sustain and grow its user base with new offerings like the search product.
Moreover, OpenAI’s earlier attempt to bring real-world information into ChatGPT, called ChatGPT plugins, was retired in April, according to a help center posting on the company’s website. This setback highlights the difficulties in integrating up-to-date web data into language models.
As the AI race intensifies, with tech giants and startups alike vying for dominance, consumers can expect to see a wave of innovative AI-powered products and services in the coming years. However, the implications of these developments extend beyond just convenience and efficiency; they also raise important questions about privacy, bias, and the potential societal impacts of increasingly sophisticated AI systems.
Regardless of the outcome, OpenAI’s announcement on Monday is sure to be a pivotal moment in the evolving AI landscape, as the company aims to challenge Google’s long-standing reign over online search with its own unique approach powered by cutting-edge language models.