OpenAI has launched its own search engine, SearchGPT, based on artificial intelligence, which provides up-to-date and relevant answers to user queries in the form of quotes from trusted sources. The first results of using SearchGPT were not the most impressive.
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According to The Verge, users have identified a tendency for hallucinations common to many AI systems. SearchGPT shows results that are mostly either incorrect or useless. Thus, journalist Matteo Wong from the popular American magazine The Atlantic conducted his own testing. He searched for “Music festivals in Boone North Carolina in August,” which brought up a list of events that SearchGPT thought would happen in Boone in August. First on the list is the An Appalachian Summer Festival, which, according to AI, will host a series of arts events from July 29 to August 16. However, the reality turned out to be somewhat different: the festival began on June 29, and the last concert will take place on July 27, not August 16.
OpenAI launched SearchGPT in collaboration with major news outlets such as the Associated Press, Financial Times, Business Insider and others. Some deals cost the company millions of dollars.
Many publishers have serious concerns about how AI search could impact their business. There are concerns that SearchGPT or Google AI Overviews will provide too comprehensive answers, eliminating the need to click on links to articles and thereby depriving publishers of traffic.
Despite the concerns, companies see value in partnering with OpenAI to sell access to their content. Moreover, according to OpenAI, publishers will be given the opportunity to control how their content will be displayed in SearchGPT.