ChatGPT search has been out now for about a month and a half, following a Halloween announcement from OpenAI. With this new feature, the company finally rolled out an official competitor to AI search engines like Perplexity, Google’s AI Overviews, and Microsoft Bing (powered by Copilot).
OpenAI originally announced its search plans back in July, with a service called SearchGPT. While SearchGPT was a prototype and launched with a waitlist to try it, ChatGPT search took its place, with OpenAI rolling SearchGPT’s main features into its new search feature. The feature originally launched to paid subscribers only, but now, all users can access it.
How ChatGPT search works
On the surface, ChatGPT search is very much a traditional search engine. To use it, you click on the globe icon when you launch ChatGPT (or hit the / key and click Search from the pop-up) then type your query. Let’s say you ask, “What’s the weather this weekend in New York City?” Hit enter, ChatGPT “thinks” for a moment, then spits out an answer to your question.
For this weather example, ChatGPT search actually has some dynamic graphics to go with its answer. OpenAI says it has partnered with different news and data providers for visual designs and updated information like this. That includes weather, but also queries regarding stocks, sports, news, and maps.
Credit: Jake Peterson
Whatever you search the web for, ChatGPT will cite its sources, like other AI-powered search engines. If you ask, for example, “What are the latest Nintendo Switch 2 rumors?” the bot summarizes the latest news, talking about magnetic Joy-Cons, a new button, backwards compatibility with the original Switch, and a new kickstand. For all these summaries, you can see the source it’s pulling from and click through the read the full article for yourself. You can also hover your cursor over these sources if you want to see a preview without opening the entire site.
In addition, at the bottom of the answer, there’s a general “Sources” option: Click this and you can see a full list of the sources referenced for this summary, plus a longer list of search results for sources similar to your query—regardless of whether or not ChatGPT used them.
OpenAI says ChatGPT search is powered by a “fine-tuned” version of its GPT-4o model, and distills outputs from OpenAI’s o1-preview model. The company has also partnered with many news organizations across the industry, name-dropping companies like Condé Nast, Financial Times, Le Monde, The Atlantic, and Vox Media. To sell the point (and to get ahead of criticism, no doubt), the company included a number of quotes about how great its new search engine is from leaders of these media companies.
On day eight of the company’s “12 Days of OpenAI” event, OpenAI announced that ChatGPT search was coming to Advanced Voice, something that didn’t ship with the original launch of search.
ChatGPT search and privacy
According to OpenAI, when you search for something with ChatGPT’s new web search feature, ChatGPT may share “disassociated search queries” with other search providers, like Bing. The bot also scrapes your location information from your IP address, and can share it with these search providers for improving search result accuracy.
Who can use ChatGPT search?
This feature was originally only available for ChatGPT Plus or ChatGPT Team users, but now all users are able to access it. You do need to be logged into your account to try it, however.
The feature works on both desktop and mobile. In fact, OpenAI rolled out some optimizations for the mobile experience during its 12 Days event, including linked results you can preview without opening in your browser. That includes the option to check out directions on a map directly in ChatGPT.
How to set ChatGPT search as your default search engine
If you’re sick of Google, Bing, even Perplexity, and want to use ChatGPT as your default search engine going forward, you actually can. You’ll need to be using Chrome and download the ChatGPT search extension.
Now, when you type a query in your address bar, Chrome will open up ChatGPT. You’ll need to be logged into your eligible account, though. Otherwise, you’ll just get a result from the standard ChatGPT service, not search.
Is ChatGPT search accurate?
I reference Google’s AI Overviews a lot, not because it’s a reliable use of AI, but because it had such a disastrous rollout. While SearchGPT didn’t make any significant headlines for inaccuracy, it’s important to remember that generative AI is far from perfect. In fact, each result from ChatGPT, including search, ends with “ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.”
That’s because AI can at times hallucinate, or, simply, makes things up that aren’t true. What certainly helps make fact-checking easier are the linked sources. If you want to double-check that a result is correct, click through the source to see if that site is both reflective of what ChatGPT says, and trustworthy in general. If ChatGPT says something, and cites AP News, and AP says it’s true, that’s pretty solid. If ChatGPT says something, and cites trustmebro.fr, exercise skepticism.
All that said, Lifehacker writer David Nield was impressed with ChatGPT’s search features when he put it head-to-head against Google—particularly for complicated, multi-faceted searches. It seems worth checking out, but remember to be careful when accepting anything generated by AI.