There's a new AI-backed search engine in town. But can it stand up to Google's decades-long hold on internet searches?

Artificial intelligence pioneer OpenAI launched its own ChatGPT search engine on Thursday, positioning itself as a challenger to search titan Google and a direct competitor to the Bing search engine from its strategic partner Microsoft.

ChatGPT is officially an AI-powered web search engine. The company is enabling real-time information in conversations for paid subscribers today (along with SearchGPT waitlist users), with free, enterprise, and education users gaining access in the coming weeks.

ChatGPT Search is not a standalone product. It's built directly into the standard ChatGPT interface and will be triggered automatically when the AI deems that a web search is necessary, though there's also a button to manually trigger the search engine.

OpenAI has embedded a search engine in its popular ChatGPT chatbot, as tech companies compete to use artificial intelligence to improve search results.

SearchGPT was initially launched in July as a prototype, from which OpenAI planned to integrate the best features with ChatGPT later. OpenAI has collected that feedback and implemented it into its search experience, claiming it brought "the best of the SearchGPT experience" into the chatbot.

As a Halloween treat for ChatGPT users (and a trick for the likes of Google and Bing), OpenAI has turned its AI chatbot into an internet search engine. As the company explains in a blog post, ChatGPT is now better than ever at searching the web and capable of providing fast and timely answers to your questions with links to relevant sources.

OpenAI's search offers a glimpse of what an AI-search interface could one day look like. But it's too impractical as a daily driver right now. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

OpenAI has added search engine capabilities to ChatGPT, challenging Google's web search dominance. However, it's only available to paid users.