OpenAI plans to announce its artificial intelligence-based search product on Monday, according to two sources familiar with the matter, upping its ante in the competition with search king Google.
The announcement date, while subject to change, has not been previously reported. Bloomberg and The Information reported that Microsoft-backed OpenAI is working on a search product to potentially compete with Alphabet’s Google and with Perplexity, a well-funded AI search startup.
OpenAI declined to comment.
The announcement could be timed a day before Tuesday’s start of Google’s annual I/O conference, where the tech giant is expected to unveil a series of AI-related products.
According to Bloomberg, OpenAI’s search product is an extension of its flagship ChatGPT product and allows ChatGPT to pull information directly from the Web and include citations. ChatGPT is OpenAI’s chatbot product that uses the company’s advanced AI models to generate human-like responses to text prompts.
Industry observers have long called ChatGPT an alternative to online information gathering, although it has struggled to provide accurate and real-time information from the Web. OpenAI had previously integrated it with Microsoft’s Bing for paid subscribers. Meanwhile, Google announced general AI features for its eponymous tool.
Startup Perplexity, valued at $1 billion, was founded by a former OpenAI researcher and has attracted attention through providing an AI-native search interface that displays citations in results and images as well as the text in its response. It has 10 million monthly active users, according to a January blog post by the startup.
At the time, OpenAI’s ChatGPT product was considered the fastest app ever to reach 100 million monthly active users after launching in late 2022. However, worldwide traffic to the site of ChatGPT has skyrocketed over the past year and it’s only now that according to analytics firm Similarweb, it’s back to its peak in May 2023 and the AI company is under pressure to expand its user base.
An earlier effort to bring up-to-date and practical information to ChatGPT, called the ChatGPT plugin, was discontinued in April, according to a help center post on OpenAI’s website.
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