Key Takeaways
- OpenAI may be developing a ChatGPT-based search engine, as hinted by the creation of “search.chatgpt.com” website.
- Utilizing AI at all stages, the search engine could understand user queries naturally and present information like a summary.
- Speculation varies, with some believing it’s a cover, while others suggest a potential announcement at an upcoming OpenAi event.
With AI advancing at a rapid pace, companies are scrambling to find the best ways to deploy the new technology and undercut their competition. Now, soon after OpenAI declared it’s making its own AI hardware, it seems the company is trying to see if it can knock Google down a spot or two. An eagle-eyed user spotted OpenAI create an SSL certificate for a search-based URL, which hints that the company may have its own AI-powered search engine in the works.
OpenAI may be working on a ChatGPT-based search engine
This tidbit of information was posted on Hacker News by daolf. They noticed that the website “search.chatgpt.com” had been created, and registered with an SSL certificate. The certificate is needed if a website wishes to use the HTTPS protocol, which would be pretty important for a search engine to have. As such, by the URL alone, there’s a chance that OpenAI is planning a ChatGPT-powered search.
If such a project comes to life, it’ll likely use AI at all of the stages. First, OpenAI can utilize ChatGPT’s natural language processing to guess what the user wants to find, meaning you could talk to the search engine like a person instead of a robot. And given how ChatGPT is very good at taking in a ton of information and presenting it all as a summary, it could answer your questions better than standard search engines; the same way the chatbot does right now when you ask it things.
Of course, a single URL is not a surefire confirmation that OpenAI will do anything with it. In fact, user surfingdino believes this is all just a sneaky cover:
It’s a clever way of getting around the accusations of stealing content. They can say that they are scraping it to make it searchable, just like Google.
However, ChildOfChaos believes there’s a chance OpenAI is really going for it:
There is a rumour of an OpenAi event apparently next week, so likely what this is.
Some creators also seem to suggest they know what is going on, youtube mattvidpro hinted at it when talking about the gpt2-chatbot, he mentioned he knew something but couldn’t talk about it or get sued.
What is OpenAI planning? We’ll have to wait and see.