Hello everyone and welcome back to the Cognixia podcast. Every week, we get together to talk about the latest happenings, bust some myths, discuss new concepts, and a lot more from the world of emerging digital technologies. From cloud computing to DevOps, containers to ChatGPT, and Project management to IT service management, we cover a little bit of everything weekly to inspire our listeners to learn something new, sharpen their skills, and move ahead in their careers.
In today’s episode, we talk about SearchGPT, the upcoming offering from OpenAI that combines AI-generated content with human-written articles in a search engine format that is capable of handling follow-up questions beyond just the first search query. The prototype is being released to a small group of users and publishers. It will bring together machine-generated content and up-to-date content pulled from the web. And, as is often the case with new releases, there is already a waitlist that you can join if you would like to try out this prototype too.
How is SearchGPT different from a regular search engine?
Well, firstly, with SearchGPT, users can ask follow-up questions about their searches and it will be a part of one conversation unlike traditional search engines where each search query is independent of other queries and there is no continuation. Secondly, users can open tabs to check out the different links that are pulled from the web or also get visual answers in the form of videos or charts.
So, will OpenAI be using more of people’s online content without any credit to the original creators? Interestingly, no. This time around, OpenAI has partnered with several media companies, including The Atlantic and News Corp, and has even tried its best to reassure various publishers that the links to the original content would be prominently displayed in the SearchGPT results. That should come as a relief to the content creators and publishers, isn’t it?
According to the blog on OpenAI where this announcement was made, “We are committed to a thriving ecosystem of publishers and creators. We hope to help users discover publisher sites and experiences while bringing more choices to search. For decades, search has been a foundational way for publishers and creators to reach users. Now we are using AI to enhance this experience by highlighting high-quality content in a conversational interface with multiple opportunities for users to engage.”
In this regard, Nicholas Thompson, the CEO of The Atlantic has said, “AI search is going to become one of the key ways that people navigate the internet, and it is crucial, in these early days, that the technology is built in a way that values, respects, and protects journalism and publishers. We look forward to partnering with OpenAI in the process and creating a new way for the readers to discover The Atlantic.”
So, publishers do seem a lot more supportive of this venture than they were of ChatGPT. If you recall, some publishers and authors had even sued OpenAI for using their content to train their models, as well as generate new content without offering any credit or compensation.
Robert Thomson, the CEO of News Corp, yet another publisher that OpenAI has partnered with, has said, “Sam (Altman) and the truly talented team at OpenAI innately understand that for AI-powered search to be effective, it must be founded on the highest quality, most reliable information furnished by trusted sources. For the heavens to be in equilibrium, the relationship between technology and content must be symbiotic and provenance must be protected.”
Up until now, Google has had a lion’s share of the market when it comes to the search engine landscape, holding about 81.95% of the global search engine market share as of January 2024. Other players like Bing Search, etc. hold really tiny shares. Google also launched the Search Generative Experience last year which has made it stronger in its game. In fact, if you would like to know more about Google’s Search Generative Experience, we have an entire episode talking about it, so do check it out. Microsoft has also been working on front footing, adding a Bing Chat and a refined generative AI answer format to its search engine capabilities.
The search engine market is heating up, there is no doubt about that. The nature of search engines is changing too. From just serving as a simplified online search directory to becoming more conversational, search engines are transforming and so is the way people are searching their queries. Now, Google does have a 26-year headstart on search engines and that is huge, but if there is someone who can disrupt the market, it has to be OpenAI. ChatGPT has been innovative and pretty disruptive by itself, and despite the initial novelty that has worn off, it has made a dent in the way people function. Will SearchGPT be able to replicate that success? That is something only time can tell.
SearchGPT is still a temporary prototype and one major improvement it has over ChatGPT is it offers clear and relevant sources, something that was completely missing in ChatGPT. Searching for answers online can be tedious and often requires multiple search attempts before one stumbles into the information they were looking for. But when you have an option to ask follow-up questions to your search queries, the process can become a lot simpler, right?
The other drawback that ChatGPT faced was that it didn’t have the most current information, but SearchGPT could solve that problem since it offers real-time up-to-date information pulled from the web.
So, what happens next? Well, for now, only a small group of users will be testing SearchGPT and providing feedback for the same. If you are interested in this, you can join the waitlist, the link for the same would be on the OpenAI website. After thorough testing, feedback collection, and corrections, the temporary prototype would be transformed into a more permanent offering with all the modifications. It could be some time before that happens, though. And, how it would pan out, only time can tell.
Does it have the potential to transform the way people search? Yes.
Can it disrupt the search engine market for good? Potentially, yes.
Will it actually happen? We don’t know, we must wait and watch.
So, let’s hold tight until then.
And, with that, we come to the end of this week’s episode of the Cognixia podcast. We will be back next week with another interesting and exciting new episode. We hope you enjoyed listening to us today. As we mentioned, if you would like to know more about Search Generative Engine, check out our episode on the same from a few months back.
Until we meet again next week then, happy learning!
