OpenAI is entering the search engine arena long dominated by Google, with the partial launch of its new AI-powered search engine called SearchGPT.

SearchGPT will offer real-time access to the internet, aiming to give answers from the web with relevant, up-to-date sources.

The prototype will be launched to a select range of researches and users for feedback at this stage, but OpenAI plans on integrating the best of SearchGPT’s features into its ChatGPT model in the future.

OpenAI say that users will be able to ask SearchGPT questions and it will respond much like ChatGPT, with formal answers, whilst providing relevant sources to these answers.

Instead of providing a list of websites with answers, as other search engines typically do, SearchGPT will reply with the answers from the website already laid out to users, providing links and credit for further exploration.

Users will also be able to ask follow up questions, in keeping with the conversational tone of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

The platform, though still in development, will place OpenAI not only in competition with the largest search engine in the world, but also with its biggest supporter, Microsoft and its Bing search engine.

In a statement, OpenAI said it was committed to supporting publishers and creators, saying that SearchGPT will connect users with publishers by “prominently citing and linking to them in searches.”

Answers to queries will have clear, in-line attribution and links so users can ascertain where information is coming from and engage with the original content.

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During its continued development, OpenAI says it is looking into methods for publishers to manage how they appear on SearchGPT so they can have more control over their content.

Importantly, OpenAI has separated SearchGPT from training its genrative AI foundation models, meaning that sites can be surfaces in search results even if they have opted out of generative AI training.