OpenAI Could Challenge Google and Puzzle with AI-Powered Search: Reports

OpenAI, already one of the leading minds in the hot AI space, could be working on an AI-powered search engine to challenge tech titan Google, as well as AI tool Perplexity, an expert in the Web.

The tantalizing showdown over the future of online information seeking arises from rumors and alleged leaks of insider information. The first signs emerged in February, when Information reported that OpenAI was developing a search app aimed at Google’s core competition.

If true, it would be a marked departure from the company’s current agreement with Microsoft to use Bing to give ChatGPT access to the web. Bing uses retrieval augmented generation (RAG) to improve responses by combining web search data into GPT-4 chatbot responses, giving it an advantage in terms of information recency.

More recently, a well-known leaker in the AI ​​space who goes by the pseudonym Jimmy Apples claimed that OpenAI could soon announce a new search engine. Citing an avalanche of new domain name registrations emanating from chatgpt.com, he posited that the Mountain View, California-based firm is preparing to host an event to showcase this new capability.

“At 10am on May 9th for an OpenAI event apparently, it might not be the model launch but the search engine announcement,” he tweeted. “I guess they can’t help but upstage Google I/O,” the annual developers conference scheduled to begin. on Tuesday.

Ashutosh Shrivastava, another Twitter user active in the AI ​​community, dug deeper and stated that OpenAI had been very active with a new subdomain called search.chatgpt.com.

“OpenAI’s recent SSL certificate registrations revealed something interesting: the domain (search-dot-chatgpt-dot-com) may indicate that OpenAI is developing a search feature,” he said.

A standard WHOIS domain record lookup confirms that the subdomain exists, but attempts to access it fail.

Jimmy Apples also said that OpenAI may be testing more AI features or models.

“I count at least 50+ new asynchronous subdomains since April 24,” he tweeted, speculating that a new ChatGPT search engine could offer faster responses than its main chatbot and feature strong summarization capabilities.

Web search and AI

Until the explosive debut of consumer-ready AI tools like ChatGPT, Google was the king of search, providing the primary way people found information online. But its central position is being questioned as users become more comfortable asking a chatbot for answers than performing a Google search.

For some, the change can’t come soon enough, as Google’s search results are increasingly filled with paid placements and sites that exist only to attract search traffic.

On the other hand, the recency and completeness of the information provided by AI models is often a weakness of chatbots, as well as devices intended to make smartphones obsolete. Two high-profile AI device launches in the last month (the Humane AI pin and the Rabbit R1) have laid bare the limitations of this much-hyped approach to ubiquitous computing.

Some companies are already combining AI and search. Perplexity is an AI-powered search engine that has built a reputation in the AI ​​space and attracted significant investments from Nvidia and Jeff Bezos. Recently, Microsoft, which is the main investor in OpenAI, banned employees from using Perplexity for security reasons. And while its reach is minuscule compared to tools from OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft, Perplexity is experiencing historic levels of interest right now, according to Google Trends.

Image: Google Trends

If OpenAI develops a native search engine powered by GPT, it would go head-to-head with Google Search, which has essentially owned this critical facet of the Internet since its launch in 1998. It would also immediately eclipse Perplexity’s leadership in the area. most specialized AI-powered Search Engines.

Marketing platform Semrush estimates that 5.9 million searches are performed on Google every minute, which adds up to 8.5 billion searches per day or 3.1 trillion searches per year. ChatGPT, which has only been around for 17 months, currently has around 1.6 billion visits per month, while Perplexity is used by 10 million people each month.

In a recent podcast with Lex Fridman, head of OpenAI, Sam Altman hinted at OpenAI’s interest in reinventing web search.

“I don’t think anyone has cracked the code yet on the intersection of LLMs and search,” he said. “I would love to go do that. I think that would be great.”

So far, there has been no official announcement from OpenAI regarding the development of a search engine, and OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Decipher. But based on its founders’ enthusiasm for the space, a new AI search engine seems more likely.