Since Archie’s launch in 1990, search engines have revolutionized how we search for data online. Building on the idea of a central, searchable index, companies like Google have perfected the technology—allowing us to search for almost anything and usually find a result.
The recent influx of new artificial intelligence has seen the technology enter almost every sector and aspect of our lives, including searching. One of the most significant advancements of AI in search technology is the launch of SearchGPT.
What Is SearchGPT?
SearchGPT is an extension of the popular ChatGPT large language model (LLM) developed by OpenAI. It does not act as a standalone product; rather, the search functionality can be enabled when using the regular ChatGPT platform.
Using natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning, SearchGPT’s primary focus is to provide a more conversational search experience. In addition, the search bot is developed to be more contextually aware, providing more accurate search results.
Launched in July 2024, SearchGPT became fully available by October of the same year. However, it is only available to subscription users, meaning it requires a payment—unsurprising for those who use other online services or visit a site that typically requires a small deposit to play games or access features.
SearchGPT Foundation
Despite being a competitor for Google—the world’s most widely used search engine—SearchGPT actually has some roots in Google. The Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) models released by OpenAI have ties to the Transformer model that Google was working on in 2017.
This model, which allowed easier processing of sequential data, forms the basis of LLM models. Considering that SearchGPT uses the same foundation, its roots lie in the search behemoth. However, it has several unique abilities that Google still lacks.
Benefits of Using SearchGPT
SearchGPT is relatively new and, as mentioned, has to undergo testing from most internet users. However, even with a smaller user pool, the platform has already demonstrated some unique advantages over traditional search platforms, providing a more intelligent search.
Conversational Search
The most notable of these advantages is the engine’s ability to understand and interpret conversational search syntaxes. While Google and other engines like Yahoo! and Duck Duck Go can do this to an extent, they are often limited and require more streamlined and condensed queries.
By contrast, SearchGPT can be interacted with using natural language in a conversational style reminiscent of asking a question of another human. Due to its NLP ability, the platform performs relatively well at extracting what the main query is, finding results, and displaying them.
Summarize
Another helpful ability that SearchGPT offers and other engines lack is its ability to summarize information. When searching using traditional methods, the task of finding, extracting, and summarizing information on various websites often falls on you as the user.
SearchGPT does things differently by scraping reliable sources, compiling the information, and summarizing it in a way that answers your question. This saves valuable time otherwise spent on this task. However, it is still recommended to verify any answer given, as AI can make mistakes—particularly if pulling information from unconfirmed sources.
Complex Queries
As mentioned, SearchGPT supports conversational search syntaxes over traditional, more concise searches. This allows queries to be significantly more complex and, depending on the phrasing, may allow for more than one question to be asked at a time.
In addition to benefiting those with more advanced queries, this ability makes searching more accessible. By allowing natural speech and less refined questions, SearchGPT can be used more easily by those who aren’t attuned to traditional search engines or by those with disabilities.
SearchGPT Limitations
While SearchGPT offers a new way of searching, some limiting factors are holding it back. In specific instances, these can be debilitating if you’re looking for information and may make the platform’s usability moot.
Real-Time Information
The most significant limitation of the current model of SearchGPT is its access to live information. When searching, the AI commonly relies on its pre-indexed data and information, which is updated periodically, with little live access to the Internet.
When searching for items that are time-sensitive or may have just occurred, SearchGPT is unlikely to provide accurate data. Despite claiming to be, it is also a less reliable source for things like news updates, which occur almost by the minute.
Bias
As is a common problem with all forms of AI-powered technology, SearchGPT may be biased. This is because all AI models are trained using specific or unregulated data. Whether targeted or general, this information could contain a bias that the AI will learn and apply to all future answers or responses.
Because of this, search results may be skewed to reflect the bias ingrained in the AI rather than the most relevant information. This challenge could cause unverified information to be used to construct an answer because it better fits a bias rather than factual information that contrasts it.
Cost
The final significant limitation of SearchGPT is its cost. At present, the platform is only available to those with a GPT Plus or Teams subscription. Moreover, the platform has an incredibly high computational cost.
This cost, incurred by all AI models, relates to the resources required to compute your request. It achieves this using significant processing power, electricity, and cooling—all of which add a tremendous cost to a simple search. Because of this, there may be issues with the scalability of a search platform like this.
There is no denying that SearchGPT offers unique benefits that make it more user-friendly and accessible than traditional search engines like Google. However, its drawbacks, such as its inability to provide accurate real-time information, mean it is still a long way from overtaking Google and other engines as the go-to way to search.
Further development of the platform could change this in the future if a more sustainable and cost-effective way to manage the AI-powered search is discovered. However, even if this happens, failing to address its other limitations would likely keep it from achieving the same popularity as Google, limiting its use to a select audience and highly targeted searches.
