The shift in the industry has been coming, with Google releasing an “AI overview” before.
If you know the internet, you know Google. And if you know AI, you know ChatGPT. But now, these two are set to fight to be your go-to search engine. And, for now, it seems ChatGPT has gained a slight edge over Google uncle.
The basic difference between asking ChatGPT a question and asking Google the same was the manner in which you’d receive answers. ChatGPT would answer in a way that you would find familiar, like a chat with a human, but Google would instead make you click on links and go on your journey of discovery, finding answers among suggested websites.
Google was much more up to speed with the world, giving you results that are up to date, dynamic. ChatGPT had limited capacity in answering real-time information dependent on the cut-off date of its training data.
But now, the lines have blurred. OpenAI company first announced ChatGPT Search in July this year as a prototype. This past week, it has been officially rolled out to all ChatGPT Plus and Team users, as well as those who were on a waitlist for early access.
Photo Credit: OpenAI
This means that you can ask ChatGPT “will I need an Umbrella to carry to the office today?” and it will answer you with an exact yes or no, based on the weather forecast of your area in real time. You can also ask “What is India’s score against Australia” and it will pull up the real-time scores for you.
With search capabilities, ChatGPT is now equipped to browse the internet in real time. The integration of the web search feature has also been done so seamlessly that one can easily miss it. The user can trigger search capabilities by either clicking on the neat web “Search” option in the prompt box, or it triggers on its own based on the query.
You can also set ChatGPT as your default search engine now, in place of Google by downloading a Google Chrome Extension for ChatGPT (the irony in that sentence!).
The responses are now referenced as well, with links in text, as well as in a separate ‘citations’ window on the right-hand side. The model can also reference previous responses and has a better ‘context window’ allowing you to ask questions without having to explain the context every single time. This is a major step up from the traditional web search that Google offers.
AI search is the future of finding things on the internet. The shift in the industry has been coming, with Google releasing an “AI overview” before ChatGPT Search. But that hasn’t been as seamless, with the feature inconsistently triggered for some queries and not for others. The feature soon ran into trouble with its infamous “glue on pizza” and “eat rocks” responses.
The closest to ChatGPT Search is perplexity AI, which would give responses with references and was reasonably equipped to answer complex topics. However, according to some reports ChatGPT has almost 10 times the reach of Perplexity. ChatGPT search also has a much cleaner answer with a conversational tone.
Another step up is the speed with which ChatGPT now searches the web. The responses are almost always instant, and the experience is smoother than the previous versions of GPT. That said, the AI player has a long way to go before it comes even close to being as recognizable as a Google search.
For context, Google has almost 82 billion searches every month, and while the number of ChatGPT active users is not known exactly, some reports estimate it to be around 180 million.
Whether one will dominate the other is a question that will unwind in the coming times. Either way, the competition has just started to heat up and we are being spoilt for choice.