OpenAI launched a search feature within ChatGPT, positioning itself to better compete with search engines like Google, Microsoft’s Bing, and Perplexity. The feature offers up-to-the-minute sports scores, stock quotes, news, weather, and more, fueled by real-time web search and partnerships with news and data providers. Beta-testing of a prototype of the search engine called SearchGPT was announced in July.

According to OpenAI, users can “search in a more natural, intuitive way” and ask follow-up questions “just like you would in a conversation.” The search model is a fine-tuned version of OpenAI’s most powerful AI model yet, GPT-4o, and is powered in part by third-party search providers and content provided by news industry partners.

OpenAI mentioned using feedback from its SearchGPT prototype to build the feature and that it plans to “keep improving search, particularly in areas like shopping and travel, and leverage the reasoning capabilities of the OpenAI o1 series to do deeper research.”

ChatGPT will “automatically search the web based on what you ask,” according to an OpenAI blog post. Users can manually click the web search icon within ChatGPT to search if they choose.

The chats will include links to sources like articles or blog posts, which users can access by clicking the “Sources” button below the response to open a sidebar. OpenAI affirmed collaboration with its news partners, including The Associated Press, Reuters, Axel Springer, Condé Nast, Hearst, Dotdash Meredith, the Financial Times, News Corp., Le Monde, The Atlantic, Time, and Vox Media.