"What are you looking for?" he asks SearchGPT. And with this simple question, OpenAI has just thrown down the gauntlet to Google. The battlefield? The entire web. The secret weapon? An artificial intelligence that promises to reinvent online search. It's the official start of an earthquake, gentlemen.
SearchGPT, the search of the future
OpenAI, the company that developed the different versions of ChatGPT, decided it was time to disrupt another industry. After some perhaps a little premature announcements, the band Sam altman has targeted the holy grail of the internet: search engines. SearchGPT, just announced, is not just a new player on the market, it is an attempt to rewrite the rules of the game.
Goodbye link lists, hello intelligent answers. SearchGPT promises to really understand what you are looking for and provide you with an organized and sensible answer. It's like having a personal assistant that surfs the web for you, filters information and serves it to you on a silver platter. In the intentions of the developers it is also able to rout the competition of alternatives already present, such as that one Perplexity AI which is already doing very well.
But does it really work?
For now, SearchGPT is just a “prototype”. OpenAI is playing it safe, limiting access to 10.000 lucky users. In other words, we could revolutionize the internet, but first let's do some tests, okay? Also because, an interesting detail, OpenAI seems to have learned from the mistakes of others.
In recent months the company has entered into agreements with various publishers, promising clear attributions and the possibility of opting out. SearchGPT will use their content, but rewarding those who produce it. Who knows if it works.
SearchGPT, the search engine war has just begun
Google is certainly not sitting idly by. The guys at Mountain View are also integrating AI features into their search engine faster than you can say “PageRank.” By the way: what will happen to SEO as we know it, and what will happen to medium and small-sized sites and publishers? The tech giants are playing chess, and we are the pawns.
And in any case, not all that glitters is gold. With great AI power comes great responsibility. There is the risk of incorrect answers, hidden bias, and the ever-present issue of privacy. And again the question of energy costs and consumption, the real key issue. OpenAI and company burn billions in computing costs and suck the energy of entire states. Sooner or later someone will have to pay the bill.
Great is the confusion under the sky
As he said W, “The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed.” SearchGPT could be a preview of how we will search for information in the future. But between limited prototypes and astronomical costs, that future may be less imminent than it seems.
And it's also understandable. SearchGPT, Perplexity AI and present and future colleagues are not “new search engines”. They are agents that aim to redefine how we interact with online information. They could be the first step towards a smarter and more accessible web, or they could prove to be a costly and unsuccessful experiment.
What do you think? Don't look for the answer online.
