About a month-and-a-half ago, OpenAI announced the integration of its search engine into its chatbot, ChatGPT, on its dedicated desktop and mobile apps as well as its browser-based equivalent. This became available to paid users first, while free users we told to wait for its roll out “over the coming months”. Now, the company says that said roll out has begun.
In an update to the same announcement post, OpenAI says that “ChatGPT search is now available to all logged-in users in regions where ChatGPT is available”. While you do still have to be logged in to get access, you don’t have to do so with an account with the company. We’ve tried just logging in with a Google account and got access to the feature just fine.
Unfortunately, those who would prefer to not log in at all, this feature isn’t available to you. Though it is unclear if OpenAI has any plans to change this, or if the company intends to keep sign-ins a minimum requirement. Either way, in use, forcing a web search will see prompts get responses that include relevant links, though the answering style remains a familiar one. Oddly enough, using the same prompt can result in wildly different responses depending on if you force the web search or not.
In case you missed it, ChatGPT search is a fine-tuned version of GPT-4o, with improvements over the prototype SearchGPT. OpenAI was also previously reported to be considering making its own web browser, but this was still in its extremely early stages, so it may not even happen in the end.
(Source: OpenAI)
