ChatGPT Search is here to battle both Google and Perplexity

By Andrew Tarantola Published October 31, 2024

ChatGPT is receiving its second new search feature of the week, the company announced on Thursday. Dubbed ChatGPT Search, this tool will deliver real-time data from the internet in response to your chat prompts.

ChatGPT Search appears to be both OpenAI’s answer to Perplexity and a shot across Google’s bow.

“You can get fast, timely answers with links to relevant web sources, which you would have previously needed to go to a search engine for,” the company exclaims in its announcement post. “This blends the benefits of a natural language interface with the value of up-to-date sports scores, news, stock quotes, and more.”

The chatbot will reportedly access this enhanced web search as needed, depending on the nature of the prompt, but can also be manually engaged by the user. OpenAI has partnered with news and data providers including The Associated Press, Axel Springer, Condé Nast, Financial Times, Hearst, News Corp, Reuters, The Atlantic, Time, and Vox Media, to provide the information for questions on a number of subjects, such as the weather, stocks, sports, current news, and maps. You can expect to see new visuals for those categories of subjects as well.

Taking a lesson from all of the trouble that Perplexity’s sticky-fingered data scraping habits have caused, ChatGPT Search is being explicit about where it is pulling its data from. The AI’s responses will include links to the information’s source, while a Source button below the response will pop open a sidebar with all of those references.

ChatGPT Search is distinctly different from the chat history search feature that the company debuted on Tuesday. Chat history search will find and surface references and statements made in your previous conversations with ChatGPT, without the need for internet queries.

Coincidentally, Google released an exceedingly similar search feature for Gemini on Thursday as well, called Grounding with Google Search.

You can try the new ChatGPT Search for yourself starting today. It’s available across the OpenAI ecosystem including the web portal, as well as the desktop and mobile apps. ChatGPT Plus and Team users, as well as folks who signed up for the Search waitlist, gain access to the feature today. It’s coming to Enterprise and Edu users “in the next few weeks,” and to free-tier users over the next few months.