OpenAI prepares a search engine to compete with Google
United States of America
El Pais Newspaper of Spain - May 9, 2024
OpenAI finalizes the launch of a search engine based on its powerful ChatGPT tool. This product, the first of its kind for the San Francisco company, aims to share with Google, considered a monopolistic force by the United States Government. The announcement of this new search engine will be made on Monday, according to the British agency Reuters. The company led by Sam Altman, backed by Microsoft since 2019 with an investment of $13 billion, has not confirmed the presentation at the moment.
The search engine would allow users to ask a question to ChatGPT and obtain as a result details of the Internet and citations to pages such as Wikipedia or blog entries, according to an anonymous source who spoke with Bloomberg. The results could also yield diagrams, designs and photographs that help illustrate the issue. Some X users speculate that the keys to this secret project are located at the address search.chatgpt.com , a page that does not exist at the moment.
The journalists who cover Silicon Valley had been summoned this Thursday to the OpenAI offices in Palo Alto to present the group's news for this spring. The information day was canceled abruptly and without giving justifications. Next week could confirm a new change in an industry that is transforming rapidly.
Analysts believe this was a natural step for the OpenAI tool. It has led the artificial intelligence revolution since its launch at the end of 2022. It then became one of the applications that reached 100 million active monthly users the fastest. Now there are 100 million weekly users. The company said in April that it has 600,000 subscribers to the ChatGPT Enterprise service, the tool focused on businesses and businesses with more than 100 employees. Although OpenAi refuses to reveal the details of its clients, it states that 92% of the 500 largest companies in the United States use its bot in some way.
Chat GPT is already an alternative used by many to search the Internet. There are those who have highlighted its limitations in gathering data and information in real time. Despite this, the tool is increasingly present on computers around the world. Its partnership with Microsoft has made it available to billions of users, who can find the bot in the Copilot service, including in Microsoft 365, its Edge browser and the Bing search engine. The inclusion of the tool has increased Windows downloads by 50%.
The alleged OpenAI engine would be added to the products that the artificial intelligence boom has given. Monday's announcement, if it happens, would occur one day before Google I/O, the event where Alphabet announces the season's news. In the 2023 edition, the Mountain View company made it clear that it was working in an environment of greater competition. It presented a new version of its famous search engine that added functions based on Gemini's artificial intelligence. These allowed you to complete open searches, write draft emails in Gmail or edit photographs.
Google and Amazon have looked for a partner to compete with the growth of OpenAI and Microsoft. The technology giants have bet on Anthropic, one of the main rivals of Sam Altman's company. But the companies' investment is much lower, since they have promised 2,000 million and 4,000, respectively.
OpenAI's new product would target Perplexity as its main target, a search engine that uses artificial intelligence as an engine that has recently gained popularity. The tool launched in 2022 has also skyrocketed the company's value, which is close to $1 billion. This shows that there is a market to explore for Altman's company, which is under pressure to expand the possibilities of ChatGPT