ChatGPT Is Now Officially A Direct Threat To Google’s Search Engine Domination

Since the early days of the internet, one name has been synonymous with web searches. In fact, most of us now refer to looking something up online as “googling.”

But the rise of artificial intelligence means that the old way of doing things is rapidly being replaced — and ChatGPT just fired a shot across the bow.

The web search revolution

You’ve probably noticed that many Google searches are now preempted by a summary provided by that company’s own proprietary AI model. The reviews so far have been mixed, but it’s clear that Google sees the need to invest heavily in a technology that could threaten its position atop the Big Tech hierarchy.

That threat came into sharp contrast recently when OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT program rolled out its own integrated search engine. The move has been in the works since at least May, which is when the company signaled that such an update would be coming.

For now, it’s only available to users with a paid subscription to ChatGPT, but OpenAI indicated that the new features would eventually be included in the free version.

A big shift for the chatbot

While ChatGPT has offered some pretty impressive results to queries of all sorts since its 2022 debut, there have been some glaring shortcomings. For starters, its set of training data, although massive, was limited to existing online text … so recent events were inaccessible.

With the rollout of its new search engine, however, users can receive current information about news events, weather, sports, and more.

Of course, as with Google’s recent renovation, there are some nagging concerns about bias, misinformation, and the sort of “hallucinations” that can make AI-generated information unreliable.

But OpenAI says it is partnering with reputable news outlets “to provide the information users are looking for.”

Chris Agee November 2nd, 2024

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