Topline
OpenAI will reportedly announce an artificial intelligence-powered search engine for its flagship chatbot ChatGPT on Monday, a much hyped and speculated feature that would ratchet up competition with search giant Google as startups and Big Tech alike race to cash in on the tech world’s latest gold rush.
OpenAI is reportedly announcing a search product on Monday.
Key Facts
OpenAI will announce its new AI search product on Monday, a day before Google is expected to announce plans for its Gemini AI products at its annual I/O developer conference, Reuters reported, citing two sources familiar with the matter.
While OpenAI kickstarted the generative AI boom with the launch of ChatGPT, the company has come under increasing pressure to expand its services as rivals release chatbots of their own and rumors the Microsoft-backed startup is plotting to enter the search business have raged for months.
According to The Verge, OpenAI’s machinations include “aggressively trying to poach Google employees” for a team working to ship the product and there are reports the company has registered a domain name for the service, search.chatgpt.com, though the URL currently displays “not found” when visited.
The AI search tool will reportedly be embedded within OpenAI’s signature chatbot ChatGPT and will source information directly from the internet, according to Bloomberg, as well as providing citations when answering user queries.
OpenAI’s search tool will be partly powered by Microsoft’s Bing search engine, The Information reported, and Bloomberg reports one version of the product will use images or diagrams alongside text when responding to questions.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to Forbes’ request for comment.
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Key Background
Google is the undisputed king of internet search. For years, it has defined how we find and consume information online, so much so that the company’s name has entered the popular lexicon as a verb. Generative AI is on the cusp of upending online search, however, offering users a new way to search. Sensing the change, Google has already started implementing AI into its search products and is widely anticipated to continue doing so, and AI startups like Perplexity are looking to challenge Google’s dominance at this potentially vulnerable time of change. The more thorough integration of OpenAI’s chatbot with real-time information and citations from the web could help resolve one of the more persistent problems AI bots face when presenting information: reliability. AI chatbots can provide convincingly true but false information — called “hallucinations” — that can be hard to fact check without proper sourcing or lack the valuable context that can be gained from manually searching through results.
What To Watch For
Google’s annual developer conference, I/O, is often filled to the brim with announcements and updates for its products. The event slated to kick off with a keynote at 10 a.m. PT on Tuesday. AI is widely expected to feature heavily this year and updates on the tech giant’s plans for its Gemini AI model are hotly anticipated, as well as news on its Android system and Pixel devices.
Forbes Valuation
Altman has a net worth of $1 billion, Forbes estimates. Though he is best known for cofounding and leading OpenAI, Altman’s fortune comes from elsewhere as doesn’t hold equity in the company. Instead, Altman’s fortune and billionaire status comes from a series of valuable investments, including stakes in newly floated Reddit, fintech darling Stripe and nuclear fusion venture Helion. Prior to his work at OpenAI, Altman founded social mapping company Loopt and he served as partner and president at influential startup incubator Y Combinator.
