May 10th message, according to two sources familiar with the matter, OpenAI is planning to officially launch its AI-driven search product next Monday local time, a move expected to intensify its competition with search giant Google.
Although the date for unveiling the new product may change, there have been no reports mentioning a specific time before. Reportedly, OpenAI, backed by Microsoft, is developing a search product that is expected to compete with Google under Alphabet and well-funded AI search startup Perplexity.
OpenAI declined to comment on this.
Google's annual I/O developer conference is set to kick off next Tuesday, where the tech giant is expected to unveil a series of new AI-related products.
Reportedly, this AI search product from OpenAI is an extended version of its flagship product ChatGPT, which allows ChatGPT to directly extract information from the web with citations. ChatGPT is a chatbot introduced by OpenAI that uses the company's cutting-edge AI models to generate human-like responses based on text prompts.
While ChatGPT still faces challenges in providing accurate and real-time web information, the industry has long seen it as an alternative for online information retrieval. OpenAI had previously offered a service for paid users to integrate ChatGPT with Microsoft's Bing search engine. Meanwhile, Google has also added generative AI capabilities to its search engine.
Perplexity, a startup founded by former OpenAI researchers, has reached a valuation of $1 billion. The AI-native search interface developed by the company, displaying text and image search results with citations, has attracted widespread attention. According to a blog post released by Perplexity in January this year, the company has reached 10 million monthly active users.
Since its launch at the end of 2022, ChatGPT quickly became the fastest application to reach 100 million monthly active users in history. However, according to data from analytics company Similarweb, ChatGPT's global traffic has fluctuated over the past year, only returning to its peak traffic in May 2023. OpenAI faces pressure in expanding its user base.
OpenAI previously attempted to incorporate the latest real-time information into ChatGPT and released the ChatGPT plugins feature. According to information released on the OpenAI website's help center, the ChatGPT plugins feature was discontinued in April this year.
