ChatGPT Enters Search Engines

The competition in the technology sector is fierce, with each company trying to carve out as big a slice of the market as possible. ChatGPT, the most well-known generative artificial intelligence (AI) platform, can be used as a free search engine, so it is in direct competition with Google. OpenAI presented this extension in late October, less than two years after the launch of ChatGPT, but it was initially reserved for paying subscribers. Users will only need an account, even a free one, to ask questions through ChatGPT Search, for example about recent news or upcoming events, and to receive a written answer with links to websites. The addition of this feature "gives ChatGPT the ability to access information in real time and, of course, to search for answers on the Internet," explained Kevin Weil, product manager at OpenAI. The app is no longer limited to its vast amount of data accumulated before a certain date in the past. It can also display answers on a map, like Google Maps, the dominant service in the sector. And the ChatGPT verbal conversation mode can also pull its answers from the internet, for paying users. In response to the spectacular growth of OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google, Meta (Facebook, Instagram), and other tech giants launched similar services in 2023 and 2024, capable of producing text and images upon a simple request formulated in ordinary language. Since Google became synonymous with online search, a highly profitable business thanks to its associated advertising technologies, its supremacy has never really been in question. Microsoft, OpenAI's main investor, was the first to integrate generative AI into an existing search engine, Bing, starting in February 2023, in an effort to highlight its service.