Privately held start-up company OpenAI is launching a new artificial intelligence-powered search engine that’s aimed at competing against Alphabet’s (GOOG/GOOGL) dominant Google.
The new search engine from OpenAI is called “SearchGPT” and it is currently being tested as a prototype before a wider rollout.
SearchGPT will be powered by the latest and most powerful A.I. technology from OpenAI’s popular chatbot called “ChatGPT.”
In a written statement, OpenAI said the aim of SearchGPT is to give people “…fast and timely answers with clear and relevant sources.”
Alphabet’s stock initially fell 2% on news of the SearchGPT prototype launch. However, this is not the first time that Google’s search engine has been challenged.
Rival Microsoft (MSFT) previously launched the Bing search engine to compete against Google. Microsoft has also added A.I. capabilities to Bing over the past 18 months.
So far, nothing has shaken Google’s dominance when it comes to searching the internet. Today, there are 8.5 billion Google searches each day, equivalent to 99,000 searches per second.
Google, which retains a 90% share of the global search engine market, generated nearly $240 billion U.S. in online advertising revenue for Alphabet in 2023.
OpenAI’s SearchGPT seems similar to the search engine previously launched by A.I. start-up Perplexity, which also claims to provide fast, reliable answers to questions using A.I.
Alphabet has previously said that it is adding A.I. capabilities to Google using its own Gemini A.I. models.
The stock of Alphabet has gained 29% in the last 12 months to trade at $167.28 U.S. per share.
