OpenAI shoots down reports it will launch a search engine (or GPT-5) next week to steal Google’s I/O spotlight, but there are clues that a more search-focused product is in the works.
Amid rumors about a search engine coming to ChatGPT, OpenAI today said it will demo updates for its AI chatbot and GPT-4 on Monday. But CEO Sam Altman chimed it to say the event will not include the launch of GPT-5 or a search engine. Instead he promised “some new stuff we think people will love [that] feels like magic to me.”
GPT-5 is the next iteration of OpenAI’s model; it’s on the agenda for 2024, but we don’t know when it will drop. Until then, news about the company this week shifted to reports of an OpenAI search engine in ChatGPT that would compete against Google.
The Information first reported that OpenAI was working on a search product in February. Fast forward to this week, when a user on X discovered new URL—search.chatgpt.com—in OpenAI’s certificate logs. The site currently displays an error message, though it appears to have been programmed by the owner of the URL and is not a typical 404 served up by the browser.
