The way we search the internet is rapidly evolving with the rise of AI-powered search engines capable of streamlining information. OpenAI unveiled the highly anticipated SearchGPT with features that present it as a challenger against Google, Perplexity, and Bing.
SearchGPT is a search engine that will respond to your query, but rather than provide you with a bunch of links to surf through, it'll provide you with a concise, brief summary based on your request. It has access to real-time information across the web, and users can ask follow-up questions or go through relevant links that it'll provide.
“Getting answers on the web can take a lot of effort, often requiring multiple attempts to get relevant results,” OpenAI says. “We believe that by enhancing the conversational capabilities of our models with real-time information from the web, finding what you’re looking for can be faster and easier.”
Although it has a UI that looks just like ChatGPT, it is separate. Launched a few days ago, on July 25, only "a small group" of users will have access to the prototype. Anyone can join the waitlist, though. Following the backlash other AI search engines recieved earlier this year, it is undestandable why OpenAI is keeping SearchGPT as a prototype.
People are a lot more skeptical about using AI-powered search engines now, since Google's AI Overviews and similar engines gave weird answers to users—like asking them to put glue in their pizza, suggesting to some others to eat rocks, advising people to stare at the sun for varying minutes depending on skin color.
Hallucination is still a problem for AI. They can't verify the information they give in the way humans can. So sometimes they spew out things that do not make sense and could even be confident with their answers, and without proper research and confirmation, it could be a problem. OpenAI realizes this, yet in In the heat of the criticism of AI-powered search engines now for being inaccurate sometimes, plagiarism, and de-emphasizing content, OpenAI claims that SearchGPT is adequately responsible and "promimently cites and links with clear, in-line name attribution."
With this "new way to search," publishers and creators are concerned about how it affects them and their work. By a percentage, somehow, these AI-powered search engines can reduce traction on their sites, which is why it is crucial, at least for the engines, to responsibly and adequately provide attribution and relevant links.
“Importantly, SearchGPT is about search and is separate from training OpenAI’s generative AI foundation models. Sites can surface in search results even if they opt out of generative AI training,” OpenAI clarifies in the blog post. “We are committed to a thriving ecosystem of publishers and creators.”
Some searches may require location. SearchGPT will collect and share general location information in such cases with search providers that they work with for better accuracy of results. Users can choose to share more about their location in the settings, which could be more useful in precision-demanding uses like weather or nearby services.
Analyzing the SearchGPT demo, however, some reporters claim that it "shows results that are mostly either wrong or not helpful.
From The Atlantic's Matteo Wong:
In a prerecorded demonstration video accompanying the announcement, a mock user types music festivals in boone north carolina in august into the SearchGPT interface. The tool then pulls up a list of festivals that it states are taking place in Boone this August, the first being An Appalachian Summer Festival, which according to the tool is hosting a series of arts events from July 29 to August 16 of this year. Someone in Boone hoping to buy tickets to one of those concerts, however, would run into trouble. In fact, the festival started on June 29 and will have its final concert on July 27. Instead, July 29–August 16 are the dates for which the festival’s box office will be officially closed. (I confirmed these dates with the festival’s box office.)
And this still points to the hallucination problem with AI. As much as SearchGPT and other AI-powered search engines offer exciting and more efficient ways to search the internet, their technologies are really not in the best place in these times to be 100% reliable. Yet again, it is only the dawn of the AI Era.
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