OpenAI Brings Generative AI Search Experience to ChatGPT

Amid scepticism, OpenAI has finally released the generative AI search experience on ChatGPT, powered by GPT-4o. This development comes just days after the company unveiled GPT-4o at its latest Spring Update event.

AIM recently asked a question on ChatGPT about ‘India’s AI ecosystem’, and ChatGPT cited AIM’s article in its response.

A few days ago OpenAI hired Shivakumar Venkataraman, a Google veteran, as its new vice president. Venkataraman’s extensive experience in search advertising at Google makes him a valuable asset for OpenAI as it plans to build ‘Google Search Alternative’. 

OpenAI recently partnered with Reddit as well to bring enhanced Reddit content to ChatGPT and new products, helping users discover and engage with Reddit communities.

Moreover, in a recent podcast with Lex Fridman, OpenAI chief Sam Altman said that, “The intersection of LLMs plus search, I don’t think anyone has cracked the code on yet. I would love to go do that. I think that would be cool.” 

He also said that OpenAI does not want to build another Google Search. “I find that (Google Search) boring. I mean, if the question is if we can build a better search engine than Google or whatever, then sure, we should.

“Google shows you like 10 blue links, like 13 ads, and then 10 blue links, and that’s like one way to find information. But the thing that’s exciting to me is not that we can go build a better copy of Google Search, but that maybe there’s just a much better way to help people find, act on, and synthesise information,” said Altman. 

Meanwhile, Google recently introduced ‘AI Overviews’ at Google I/O 2024. This feature generates summaries for the user’s queries.

“Sometimes you want a quick answer, but you don’t have time to piece together all the information you need. Search will do the work for you with AI Overviews,” said Google Search VP Liz Reid.

Google Search is powered by the Gemini model customised for Google Search. It combines Gemini’s advanced capabilities — including multi-step reasoning, planning, and multimodality — with best-in-class Search systems.

Perplexity is also upping its game. Against the backdrop of these developments, Perplexity onboarded three industry leaders as new advisors to boost search, mobile and distribution: Emil Michael (ex-Uber), Rich Miner (Android co-founder), and Mikhail Parakhin (ex-Bing CEO).

“Look, startups have to be aggressive in terms of competing against incumbents who already have billions of users (Google Search), and OpenAI has 100 million users. We don’t have that today,” said Aravind Srinivas, the co-founder of Perplexity, accepting the company’s fate amid Google I/O release and the plausibility of OpenAI unleashing next-generation, generative AI search experience in the coming months.