AI Ecosystem Updates | Issue# 5 [August 20, 2024]
What?
As this article from DeepLearning.AI aptly puts it “OpenAI is testing an AI-powered search engine in a bid to compete head-to-head with both Google and its close partner Microsoft Bing.” SearchGPT is an AI-powered search tool that integrates real-time data with GPT-4’s capabilities, transforming how users interact with search engines.
About SearchGPT
Introduction
SearchGPT is designed to provide concise, relevant answers with clear source attributions, enhancing the traditional search experiences. The tool is positioned to change how users retrieve information online, offering more than just links by enabling a deeper conversational experience.
How it Works
Users interact with SearchGPT through a large input box, where they type queries. The tool then organizes and summarizes findings, providing direct answers followed by source links. This allows users to ask follow-up questions and dive deeper into related topics via a new sidebar feature, making the search experience more interactive and immersive.
SearchGPT organizes search results gathered by its web crawler, similar to Google and other search engines. However, it stands out by offering direct answers to user queries and by featuring a conversational interface for follow-up questions. The tool additionally relies on web pages indexed by its crawler.
SearchGPT is multimodal and integrates text, images, and other modalities of data, making the search experience more visual and immersive. OpenAI is yet to disclose the information about the underlying model.
Collaborations and Partnerships
Publisher Involvement
OpenAI partnered has with major publishers, such as News Corp, The Atlantic, and Vox Media to ensure accurate content attribution. The collaborations allow publishers to manage their content’s appearance in SearchGPT, ensuring that the original sources are properly credited.
Opting Out
Publishers have the option to opt out of having their content used for OpenAI’s generative AI training while still appearing in search results. Precisely, the publishers have the option to opt out of having their content crawled for indexing, gathering training data, or both. This partnership framework highlights OpenAI’s commitment to ethical AI usage and maintaining trust with content creators.
Real-Time Capabilities and User Engagement
Real-Time Information Access
One of SearchGPT’s key features is its ability to provide relevant and up-to-date information to its users quickly (likely using Retrieval-Augmented Generation or RAG), enhancing its utility over traditional search engines. OpenAI uses a combination of direct content feeds and third-party partnerships to build and update search results in real time. The tool’s conversational nature allows it to build context with each subsequent user query, making the search process more fluid and intuitive. The experience can be compared to that of using Perplexity, which sources up-to-date information from the internet in realt-time and allows contenxtual follow-up queries that make it conversational in nature.
User Base and Testing
Initially, SearchGPT was rolled out to 10,000 test users. The feedback and data gathered from this testing phase are crucial for refining the tool before wider release. The waitlist is currently closed and OpenAI anticipates expanding the access for other users in the future.
Competition
SearchGPT introduces a compelling alternative to the established search engines, such as Google and Bing, and to AI-driven platforms like Perplexity. The tool’s success will depend on how well it can capitalize on its strengths and address the limitations identified in comparison to its competitors. Let us dive deep below.
SearchGPT vs. Google Search
Advantages
- Conversational Interaction: SearchGPT’s ability to engage in conversational queries, where it builds context over multiple questions, offers a more dynamic and interactive search experience compared to Google’s traditional link-based approach.
- Real-Time Information: Unlike Google, which often relies on indexed data that might not be up-to-the-minute, SearchGPT integrates real-time information, providing users with the most current answers.
- Source Attribution: SearchGPT emphasizes providing clear and relevant source links with its answers, ensuring transparency and credibility. Google does provide links, but may not always present concise, easily digestible answers with direct attributions.
Disadvantages
- Search Breadth and Depth: Google Search has a vast index and extensive resources, which might offer more comprehensive search results for complex queries. SearchGPT is a newer tool and will take some time to mature to such depths.
- Established Ecosystem: Google’s ecosystem, including services like Google Maps, Gmail, and YouTube, integrates seamlessly with its search, offering a holistic user experience that SearchGPT currently cannot replicate.
SearchGPT vs. Microsoft Bing
Advantages
- Contextual Understanding: While Bing has integrated AI features, SearchGPT’s focus on contextual understanding through conversations allows for a more personalized and relevant user experience.
- Partnerships with Publishers: SearchGPT’s collaborations with major publishers ensure high-quality content with clear attributions, which may give it an edge in reliability over Bing.
Disdvantages
- Market Share and Reach: Bing, being backed by Microsoft, has a solid presence and integration with Windows and Office products. This could limit SearchGPT’s adoption unless it forms similar strategic partnerships or integrations. It is important to note here that Microsoft has invested heavily in OpenAI to facilitate breakthroughs in AI.
- AI Integration: Bing’s integration of AI, particularly through its partnership with OpenAI in the development of ChatGPT, means that SearchGPT must differentiate itself significantly to compete effectively within the same ecosystem.
SearchGPT vs. Perplexity
Advantages
- Partnerships with Publishers: SearchGPT’s collaborations with major publishers to ensure high-quality content with clear attributions allow them to steer clear of any legal copyright concerns. Publishers would get visibility and users would get reliable information through SearchGPT. Perplexity has been fighting copyright concerns as publishers accuse the search engine of using copyrighted content in the search results. More here and here.
- Visual Experience: SearchGPT aims to engage its users by incorporating more visual elements in the search results.
- Integration with ChatGPT: OpenAI may consider adding SearchGPT to ChatGPT, which will help augment SearchGPT’s user base and traffic.
Disdvantages
- Similarity: A part of the AI community feels that SearchGPT is a copy of Perplexity. This may not be true. The two AI-driven search engines may be solving the same purpose differently in terms of the built-in technology and are probably just similar tools. However, for now, OpenAI will have to deal with the comparison and constructive feedback, as the tools provide a similar experience for the end user.
- First-Mover Advantage: Perplexity had the first-mover advantage in terms of AI-driven search engines and may be a few months ahead of SearchGPT in terms of grabbing a share of the search market, after the likes of Google and Microsoft.
Future Work
SearchGPT marks a shift towards more conversational, AI-driven search experiences that can adapt and grow with the user needs. Future plans for SearchGPT involve scaling up access and refining the model based on user feedback. OpenAI aims to expand the tool’s availability while continuously improving its functionality and accuracy.
Thoughts
There is no doubt about SearchGPT’s potential to reshape the online search experience, not just by providing answers, but by fundamentally changing user interaction with search engines. Google and Microsoft have been working on bringing AI-driven search results and summaries for Google Search and Bing users. Google expanded its AI Overview program to include AI-generated summaries at the top of Google Search earlier this year. You.com, apart from Perplexity too offers AI-driven search results.
However, we do expect the advent of SearchGPT to propel research and innovation across each of these companies (and others working on search engines as well). For Google, however, the equation is a bit different. It has been the market leader over the past two decades and the tech behemoth has always acknowledged that revenue from ads on search has been a key pillar of its growth. They will need to push the pedal before a chunk of the ad revenue pie is seized by OpenAI’s SearchGPT. As this article by DeepLearning.AI rightly points out, AI ended up disrupting search in just about two years since the launch of ChatGPT.
We do believe that the partnership with potent publishers is a big plus and will help scale SearchGPT. We expect more such partnerships in the future to broaden SearchGPT’s underlying knowledge base with up-to-date information.
OpenAI does emphasize the fact that SearchGPT is a prototype that is being improved through testing and user feedback, and acknowledges potential inaccuracies. We are really excited about the prospects of SearchGPT, and AI and GenAI in general, with applications potentially changing the way we interact with the world.
If you are interested to learn more, feel free to check out these coverages by AlphaSignal and AI Disruptor.
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Acronyms used in the blog that have not been defined earlier: (a) Artificial Intelligence (AI) and (b) Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI).