OpenAI wanted to destroy Google with its SearchGPT: the reality is very different

When OpenAI introduced SearchGPT, the demonstrations suggested that everything related to the way people search for things on the Internet would immediately change forever.

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However, that initial effect evaporated as soon as we saw it in action. The examples of the AI search engine in operation turned out to be somewhat faulty. The challenge to Google’s reign as a search engine is still under review.

According to a new article published in The Washington Post, SearchGPT continues to stumble in the face of facts. Google may not have to worry about losing its title as the most used search engine soon (although Google is also rapidly implementing AI tools in its search engine).

If an AI-powered search engine hallucinates in its answers, we have a problem

The problems are not difficult to understand. SearchGPT is supposed to combine OpenAI’s AI models with real-time web data to get faster and more accurate answers. Questions and keywords return a summary of the requested information instead of standard Google links. It can be fast and informative… but it’s not.

Unfortunately for OpenAI, that initial mistake is starting to look more like the rule than the exception. As the Post points out, early users who tested the service found that SearchGPT claimed that Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, was going to give a speech at a tech conference in the near future, which he actually had no plans to do. It’s a hallucination as bad as any other invented by ChatGPT.

And even if SearchGPT had the guarantee of telling only the truth, that is not of great comfort when it has no way of answering your questions. The evidence shared with the Post particularly minimized SearchGPT’s ability to help with local information.

And the thing is that this information has to come from somewhere. The decades that Google has been collecting data about a large number of businesses and the products and services they offer allow you to find in the blink of an eye most of the information that people need about the places around them.

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Ultimately, Google has been the ultimate search engine on the Internet for 30 years and the amount of information it has in its databases is unparalleled, no matter how much OpenAI promises us with its AI. It will take many years to see a worthy rival and OpenAI will not achieve it overnight.