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The
move, announced on Thursday, also places the AI giant in
competition with its largest backer Microsoft's Bing search and
emerging services such as Perplexity — a search-focused AI
chatbot firm backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and
semiconductor giant Nvidia.
Shares of Google's parent company Alphabet ended 3% lower on
Thursday after OpenAI's announcement.
OpenAI said it has opened sign-ups for the new tool, which is
currently in the prototype stage and is being tested with a
small group of users and publishers. The company plans to
integrate the best features from the search tool into ChatGPT in
the future.
"AI-powered search tools from OpenAI and Perplexity re-affirm
search as a content engagement model but pressure Google to be
better at its own game," Canaccord Genuity analyst Kingsley
Crane said.
Google dominates the search engine market with a 91.1% share as
of June, according to web analytics firm Statcounter.
SearchGPT will provide summarized search results with source
links in response to user queries, OpenAI said in a blog post.
Users will also be able to ask follow-up questions and receive
contextual responses.
The company will give publishers access to tools for managing
how their content appears in SearchGPT results. News Corp and
The Atlantic are publishing partners for SearchGPT.
SearchGPT signals a closer collaboration between publishers and
OpenAI, following content licensing agreements with major
organizations like Associated Press, News Corp and Axel
Springer.
"Newer AI-powered search providers could face challenges of
their own, with Perplexity already facing pending legal action
from publishers like Wired and Forbes, and Condé Nast," said
Crane.
Major search engines have been trying to integrate AI into
search since ChatGPT first launched in November 2022. Microsoft,
through its early investment, adopted OpenAI technology for its
Bing search engine, while Google rolled out AI-powered summaries
for the wider public at its developer conference in May.
Google did not respond to a Reuters query on the potential
impact of SearchGPT on its business.
Reuters had earlier reported on OpenAI's plans around AI search
in May.
(Reporting by Yuvraj Malik in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid
and Jamie Freed)
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