The announcement date, though subject to change, has not
been previously reported. Bloomberg and the Information have 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 the Tuesday
start of Google's annual I/O conference, where the tech giant is expected to
unveil a slew of AI-related products.
OpenAI’s search product is an extension of its flagship
ChatGPT product, and enables ChatGPT to pull in direct information from the Web
and include citations, according to Bloomberg. ChatGPT is OpenAI’s chatbot
product that uses the company’s cutting-edge AI models to generate human-like
responses to text prompts.
Industry observers have long called ChatGPT an alternative
for gathering online information, though it has struggled with providing
accurate and real-time information from the Web. OpenAI earlier gave it an
integration with Microsoft’s Bing for paid subscribers. Meanwhile, Google has
announced generative AI features for its own namesake engine.
Startup Perplexity, which has a valuation of $1 billion, was
founded by a former OpenAI researcher, and has gained traction through
providing an AI-native search interface that shows citations in results and
images as well as text in its responses. It has 10 million monthly active
users, according to a January blog post from the startup.
At the time, OpenAI’s ChatGPT product was called the fastest
application to ever reach 100 million monthly active users after it launched in
late 2022. However, worldwide traffic to ChatGPT’s website has been on a
roller-coaster ride in the past year and is only now returning to its May 2023
peak, according to analytics firm Similarweb, and the AI company is under
pressure to expand its user base.
An earlier attempt to bring updated and real-world
information in to ChatGPT, called ChatGPT plugins, was retired in April,
according to a help center posting on OpenAI’s website. -Reuters