OpenAI’s search engine might be just around the corner. According to two sources exclusive to Reuters, the company is preparing to announce its AI search plans on Monday, May 13, setting the stage for its big play against other search engines—namely, of course, Google.
We know very little about what OpenAI has planned for its “Google-killer”: Right now, rumors suggest the search engine will capitalize on ChatGPT’s AI tech to return results from the internet, citing its findings. That sounds very similar to Google’s AI search results, powered by Gemini, as well as Bing’s Copilot search, which is also powered by ChatGPT. (Microsoft is a major investor in OpenAI.)
These big names aren’t the only ones pioneering AI-generated search, however. Perplexity, which was founded by a former OpenAI employee, also offers AI search features with citations. In addition, Perplexity comes with filters to refine your search: You can, for example, choose to only return results from academic papers, or have the bot pull sources exclusively from Reddit. (Many of us are already adding “Reddit” to the end of our searches anyway.)
While Reuters is the first to break this news, it isn’t the first time we’ve heard about the company’s search engine plans. Earlier this week, rumors of “ChatGPT search” made headlines, following the discovery of the URL “search.chatgpt.com.” At that time, speculation pointed to OpenAI making a big announcement on May 9. Thursday has come and gone with no such announcement, but those rumors weren’t based on much. If Reuters’ unnamed sources are to be believed, we’ll see ChatGPT Search, or whatever the company ends up calling its search engine, on Monday.
The company declined to comment to Reuters about the outlet’s new reporting, which doesn’t tell us much. But there’s no denying the speculation about ChatGPT Search is growing this week. If OpenAI really does have a search engine ready to drop, it will be fascinating to see how much of an impact it makes on the search market. How many of us would break away from Google, or whichever search engine we prefer, if the results were returned by ChatGPT? For a deeper analysis on that subject, check out my previous thoughts on ChatGPT Search.
