OpenAI’s ChatGPT search feature, after more than a month online, is once again getting an upgrade.
In the early hours of December 17, OpenAI kicked off its eighth day of live tech sharing. openAI Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil, ChatGPT Search Product Owner Adam Fry, and researcher Cristina Scheau announced a demonstration of the new upgrades to ChatGPT Search, which include features such as real-time search, mapping integration, advanced voice, and more! .
At the same time, OpenAI announced that ChatGPT Search is officially on the ground in available regions around the world.ChatGPT Plus paid subscribers, as well as SearchGPT waitlist users, can access it today; enterprise and education users will gain access in the next few weeks, and it will be available to free and unlogged users in the future.
At the end of October this year, ChatGPT officially went live with its search feature. However, at that time, the ChatGPT search function was geared towards paid users such as Plus. This time around, ChatGPT Search is receiving several feature upgrades.
Open globally, new custom settings & mobile optimization
ChatGPT Search utilizes third-party search providers as well as partners to provide content directly to users with the information they are looking for. This time around, OpenAI has deeply optimized the search algorithms to fetch real-time content (at the minute level) such as sports scores, stocks, news and more after a user asks a question.
“ChatGPT is now able to search the web in a better and faster way than before, it will automatically determine if a user question requires up-to-the-minute information from the web in order to quickly get a timely answer, which previously would have required a trip to a search engine to find it, but ChatGPT still offers the search the web option.” OpenAI said.
For example, when a user asks, “What are the best things to do in San Francisco this weekend?”, ChatGPT will automatically determine if it needs to get the latest information from the web, or the user can actively click on the search the web icon and ChatGPT will get the latest information from the web.
OpenAI has also partnered with multiple news and data providers for this purpose, adding updates and visual designs to categories such as weather, stocks, sports, news and maps. In journalism, OpenAI has partnered with several news organizations including the Associated Press, Financial Times, Reuters, Le Monde, Atlantic Monthly, Time and Vox Media.
“ChatGPT Search promises to better highlight information from credible news sources, which benefits audiences while expanding the reach of publishers like us who produce quality news” said Pam Wasserstein, President of Vox Media.
Louis Dreyfus, CEO and publisher of Le Monde, said that AI search will be the primary way to access information in the future and in the next generation, and that partnering with OpenAI puts Le Monde at the forefront of this shift. “It allows us to test innovations early on while protecting the core values and integrity of journalism.”
In addition, after launching the ChatGPT search function, users can also watch the searched video directly in the conversation, for example, if the user wants to search for movies suitable for the whole family to go to see, and wants to watch The Lion King, after searching for the trailer of The Lion King, the user can watch it directly.
OpenAI also demonstrated a new feature that allows users to set the default search engine to prioritize the presentation of results that specifically point to links to certain sites, such as results that point to pages on travel booking sites like Netflix or Bookingsc.om. Mobile has also been optimized, allowing users to better use the search function on Android, iOS, tablets, and other mobile devices, improving efficiency by more than 40%.
“Since we’ve rolled it out to more users, we’ve been very surprised to find so many people excited to use ChatGPT as the default search engine in their browsers.” said Adam Fry, Head of Search Products at OpenAI. As a result, OpenAI has also introduced a topping feature that allows users to set it as the default search engine with a single click at the top.
Traditional search engines under pressure as AI search competition intensifies
ChatGPT also integrates a new map function, which allows users to view the surrounding geographic location information directly in the search results for route planning and location exploration. Some analysts say that this feature may have commercialization considerations, which can be used to carry out commercial cooperation with restaurants and so on.
According to OpenAI’s demonstration, when users query for Mexican restaurants in the Mission area of San Francisco, ChatGPT can provide search results including pictures; if users want to provide outdoor barbecue restaurants, ChatGPT will provide new search results based on this, and they can also view maps of the restaurants.
The most impressive and significant update in this live demo is that OpenAI has combined the search function with ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice mode, giving search an advanced voice mode. When users activate the voice mode, they can have a more natural multi-round search conversation with ChatGPT.
OpenAI describes it as a voice search butler that allows users to look up travel destinations, information on the latest Christmas events, the latest local weather forecast, and even event ideas, which ChatGPT can respond to in voice mode. Currently, ChatGPT’s voice feature offers 10 preset styles for users to choose from.
According to OpenAI, ChatGPT’s search model is based on a fine-tuned version of GPT-4o, trained using synthetic data including output extracted from the OpenAI o1-preview, which is why the search function is equipped with voice interaction capabilities.
“Thanks to the feedback from the SearchGPT prototype, we have brought the best of the SearchGPT experience to ChatGPT. we plan to continue to improve search, especially in areas such as shopping and travel, and to leverage the inference capabilities of the OpenAI o1 family for more in-depth research.” OpenAI said.
The latest data shows that ChatGPT has more than 200 million weekly active users. This means that hundreds of millions of people can now search using ChatGPT. Obviously, OpenAI has become an AI search player that cannot be ignored.
Currently, the AI search track is getting more and more crowded, both at home and abroad. In addition to OpenAI, another startup unicorn Perplexity has also achieved rapid development, the latest valuation will soar to $9 billion, and the monthly activity of the product has reached tens of millions.
This is no small pressure on traditional search engines such as Google. Latest reports say that Google recently expanded its AI overview feature to more than 100 countries, and Meta is also developing its own AI search solution.
However, for all AI search players such as OpenAI, Google and others, it is still difficult to explore new business models.
