OpenAI has made ChatGPT’s net search tool on hand to all people without having to log in or sign up first. The characteristic, that is incorporated into the AI chatbot and available on chatgpt.Com, changed into released ultimate October earlier than increasing to extra users later inside the 12 months.
To get right of entry to the internet seek function, customers surely need to navigate to the internet site, click on on the search button, and enter their query. ChatGPT will then scrape the internet for applicable data and reply in a conversational way, like an AI chatbot. Like some other traditional seek engine, ChatGPT’s replies include photos and links to the websites from which it sourced its information.
The function is also to be had at the Android app but has now not yet rolled out to iOS on the time of writing. At this stage, there is no official clarification from OpenAI about when it is going to be to be had on Apple’s App Store, however it’s possibly to occur quicker in place of later.
ChatGPT’s net seek characteristic changed into initially simplest available to paying ChatGPT subscribers, but in December 2024, OpenAI rolled it out to all customers with a loose ChatGPT account. However, many industry observers believed that OpenAI might want to make the feature to be had to every person – irrespective of whether they have got a ChatGPT account or no longer – for it to have any hazard of disrupting the internet search marketplace.
The Guardian suggested in December that OpenAI’s web search function is susceptible to prompt injection strategies. As according to the document, if a website makes use of hidden text to send incorrect statistics the usage of HTML or CSS, the AI device choices it up and generates biased output. The flaw could be exploited to propagate incorrect information, consisting of fake evaluations of products on e-trade web sites.
Additionally, the file claimed that set off injections in hidden textual content could also be used to supply malicious code from websites. The method may be utilized by unscrupulous internet site publishers to generate favorable reviews in their merchandise on AI search tools and mislead users in various different ways. It is uncertain whether OpenAI has constant the issue.
Vulnerabilities however, the flow to provide AI-primarily based internet search to all customers ought to pose Google its largest project in view that its inception almost three decades ago. Google is presently the main seek engine within the world, accounting for nearly ninety percent of all web searches between January 2024 and January 2025. However, OpenAI’s latest flow ought to put stress on Google as ChatGPT seek turns into widely available.