ChatGPT Launches Search Engine, Challenging Google’s Dominance,
Google Scrambles to Launch Search-Enhanced AI Hours Before OpenAI’s ChatGPT Search Release, and Microsoft Is Leveraging AI Enabled Development Tools In A Bid To Take Market Share From AWS
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ChatGPT Launches Search Engine, Challenging Google’s Dominance
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has launched a new version of its chatbot called “ChatGPT Search,” directly stepping into the market dominated by Google for decades. Announced on Thursday, this new version of ChatGPT aims to offer a seamless search engine-like experience that provides users with the latest available information online.
Unlike traditional search engines, ChatGPT Search presents results in a conversational format, summarizing information and citing reputable sources. Users can ask about topics ranging from “best Chinese food near me” to the weather forecast, receiving results similar to those offered by Google, but with an AI-assisted touch.
The search capabilities are also available through the Advanced Voice Mode that it launched in September.
To ensure reliable results, OpenAI has partnered with media companies like The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and Vox, allowing their content to be part of the search database.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sees ChatGPT Search as a faster and more convenient way to get information. “For many queries, I find it to be a way faster/easier way to get the information I’m looking for,” Altman said during a public Q&A on Reddit. He emphasized that ChatGPT could be particularly helpful for complex research, with the added benefit of dynamically generating custom web pages for search queries in the future.
On the backend, ChatGPT Search uses other search engines, including Microsoft’s Bing, to power its results, according to Srinivas Narayanan, OpenAI’s vice president of engineering. While OpenAI is not identifying all of the their search partners, ChatGPT is using Bing in what some have seen as a reversal of an earlier strategy where Microsoft was looking to use integrate ChatGPT into Bing to gain market share from Google.
The launch of ChatGPT Search is a sign of the growing AI-driven competition in the search engine market. And there are other companies. Perplexity, an AI search engine backed by Jeff Bezos, has gained significant popularity. Whether it can maintain that with OpenAI as a direct competitor may be an issue.
Meanwhile, Google is pushing it’s Gemini large language model to enhance its search results.
Although Google still holds a commanding 91% market share, recent trends suggest a small but notable shift. A September survey by investment firm Evercore showed that 8% of respondents chose ChatGPT over Google for search—a jump from 1% just three months earlier. While this is still a minor dent in Google’s search dominance, it shows that AI-powered alternatives are slowly gaining traction.
Which brings us to our second story this morning.
Google Scrambles to Launch Search-Enhanced AI Hours Before OpenAI’s ChatGPT Search Release
Google announced it was giving its Gemini AI platform real-time access to Google Search, just hours before OpenAI’s anticipated launch of “ChatGPT Search.” Coincidence? I think not.
This head-to-head timing highlights the intensifying rivalry for dominance in the AI-driven search engine market.
Google’s new feature, called “Grounding with Google Search,” allows its AI models to tap into real-time information, providing developers with the capability to integrate live search data into their applications. In contrast, OpenAI’s consumer-focused ChatGPT Search aims directly at end-users, providing AI-enhanced answers to everyday questions like restaurant recommendations or sports scores.
The simultaneous launches reveal different strategies: Google is focusing on enhancing its AI infrastructure for developers, while OpenAI is targeting consumer convenience with a conversational search experience.
But that doesn’t mean that Google is ignoring search in its browser. It has a program through Google labs where users can sign up for an experimental program. And there are occasional appearances of AI Enabled search in standard searches – according to Google “where appropriate.”
But Google has an issue in implementing AI enabled search more widely. Google makes the bulk of its revenue from ads, and a major chunk of that revenue comes from the paid ads at the top of the search pages. So if that real estate is given up to AI enabled search, it could have a real impact on revenue.
So as much as Google wants to get out ahead of OpenAI and others in AI enabled search, they are going to have to find a way to make that fit their revenue model.
And Microsoft is going after AWS with an aggressive set of developer tools for its Azure AI platform.
Recent updates from the Microsoft Build conference include new tools for creating custom AI copilots and plugins that allow seamless integration of AI functionalities across various Microsoft services such as Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and ChatGPT
Azure AI Studio and Machine Learning Prompt Flow: This new suite enables developers to construct and test prompts, integrate external data sources into Azure OpenAI services, and manage AI model interactions more fluidly. This is expected to streamline the deployment of customized AI solutions for businesses
Unified Plugin Ecosystem: By adopting OpenAI’s plugin standards, Microsoft allows developers to create plugins compatible across multiple platforms. This ecosystem encourages more interoperable AI applications, potentially reducing the development gap for complex AI-powered software
The Official Microsoft Blog
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Microsoft Fabric and Real-Time Intelligence: These innovations aim to enhance data analytics capabilities by integrating Microsoft’s data management and analytics into a cohesive platform, facilitating real-time data insights critical for AI applications
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This advancement signals Microsoft’s strategic move to attract developers who may typically rely on AWS, by offering a more integrated and developer-friendly AI infrastructure on Azure.
Expect more and more of these types of announcements as companies drive to get returns on their AI investments.
And that’s our show for today.
Reach me at editorial@technewsday.ca
I’m your host Jim Love, have a marvelous Monday
