OpenAI’s new SearchGPT prototype is a declaration of war against Google

The company said it’s launching the tool to a small group of users for feedback and plans to integrate some version of the experience into ChatGPT. You can try to reserve a spot in line by clicking “join the waitlist” on the site.

Following the announcement, CEO Sam Altman posted on X that “there is room to make search much better than it is today” and added that he’s surprised by how much he prefers it to “old school search.”

In the video included in the post, SearchGPT looks similar to Google’s Search experience, with a centered search bar in the middle of the screen. But there are key differences. The examples shown appear to result in more concise answers than a traditional Google, with summarized answers and links included at the bottom. It also shows more limited results, unlike Google, which has pages of related links.

That’s intentional, according to the company’s announcement. OpenAI said in its blog post that “getting answers on the web can take a lot of effort,” and often requires multiple tries to “get relevant results.”

“We believe that by enhancing the conversational capabilities of our models with real-time information from the web, finding what you’re looking for can be faster and easier,” the company said in the announcement.

You can also follow up with SearchGPT results with clarifying questions, or click on a button on the lefthand side to see a longer list of websites related to the query.

In an example of a search for “music festivals in boone north carolina in august,” a follow-up question around if one of the events is family friendly yields a clear answer.

However, as noted by several journalists, the demo results weren’t all that accurate. The tool listed the wrong dates for one of the festivals and another that takes place a two-hour drive away from Boone.

An OpenAI spokesperson told The Atlantic, which reported on the issue, said: “This is an initial prototype, and we’ll keep improving it.”

OpenAI has Google in its crosshairs

With SearchGPT, OpenAI is clearly positioning itself against Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) and AI startup Perplexity’s search feature.

Google’s SGE also gives users an AI-generated summary of search results, but the feature hasn’t yet been rolled out to the public, and it’s still being tested. Alphabet shares were down 2% within an hour of the announcement.

The search feature will be able to search the web in real-time and automatically summarize results from Microsoft’s Bing. Microsoft has a partnership with OpenAI and has invested billions of dollars in the company.

SearchGPT will also allow users to connect with publishers by citing and linking “clear, in-line, named attribution and links,” the announcement said. The feature will help users figure out where information is coming from and will allow them to engage with more results in a side bar with links.

There’s big money to be had in search, and Google is the undisputed leader. The lion’s share of Google’s revenue comes from its search business — $175 billion in revenue came from Google search and related ads last year, up from $162.45 billion in 2022, its annual report shows.

It also has about a 90% share of the search market, the Department of Justice said recently in the closing arguments of its antitrust case against Google.

By comparison, Microsoft’s Bing has a 5.5% share of the search market, the DOJ said. But Microsoft seems serious about its AI search ambitions.

Microsoft introduced its AI-powered Bing last February. At the time, CEO Satya Nadella said, “AI will fundamentally change every software category, starting with the largest category of all — search.”

OpenAI’s announcement comes after The Information in February that the company had been quietly developing its own web search product.

OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.