ChatGPT Search Getting Ready for iOS 18.2
Toggle Dark Mode
OpenAI has officially begun rolling out its new ChatGPT search engine to a broader audience, delivering contextual, real-time information from the web.
The AI company began piloting “SearchGPT” in July as a “temporary prototype” to a relatively limited audience. At the time, it also opened a waitlist for anyone who wanted early access. Today, it’s rolling that into ChatGPT search and opening it up to the entire waitlist and all paid ChatGPT Plus and Team subscribers. Enterprise and Education users should get access in the upcoming weeks, and it will eventually trickle down to all ChatGPT users, including free ones, over the following months.
As OpenAI describes it, the new capabilities will allow ChatGPT to provide “fast, timely answers with links to relevant web sources,” saving you the need to go to a separate search engine. This allows natural language requests made to ChatGPT to effectively perform web searches for you and incorporate that information into the answers you receive from the chatbot.
This includes getting accurate and up-to-date information about news, stock quotes, sports scores, and more. As we noted in July, ChatGPT is often good at providing historical data, but it’s often been woefully out of date.
For example, a request to ChatGPT about how many runs Aaron Judge hit last year for the New York Yankees provides an accurate answer based on information collected from multiple sources. However, ask ChatGPT how Aaron Judge did in “last week’s game,” and you’re more likely to get information from several weeks ago.
ChatGPT search promises to change that by providing “real-time information from relevant sources.” For instance, you can not only get up-to-date information on sports figures, but you’ll also be able to ask questions about whether a restaurant has any available reservations or if there are tickets available for a show you want to see tonight.
Chats will also include links straight to the sources of any information that ChatGPT provides, which improves trust and ensures that sources are properly attributed. This should, in turn, increase the willingness of reputable media sources to participate.
ChatGPT search promises to better highlight and attribute information from trustworthy news sources, benefiting audiences while expanding the reach of publishers like ourselves who produce premium journalism.Pam Wasserstein, President, Vox Media
OpenAI has partnered with multiple news and data providers to ensure that ChatGPT has ready access to current weather, stocks, sports, news, and maps. Global publishing partners include Associated Press, Axel Springer, Condé Nast, Dotdash Meredith, Financial Times, GEDI, Hearst, Le Monde, News Corp, Prisa (El País), Reuters, The Atlantic, Time, and Vox Media.
The new experience is now available in ChatGPT on the web and in its mobile and desktop apps. While OpenAI doesn’t mention its Apple partnership in today’s announcement, it will presumably be passed through into the ChatGPT integration coming in iOS 18.2. This, in turn, should improve Siri’s ability to ferret out relevant and up-to-date information from the web instead of just throwing up a random collection of Google results.
This is already working for me in the first iOS 18.2 developer beta. While I have early access to ChatGPT search as I joined the SearchGPT waitlist in July, there’s no reason to assume it won’t work for everyone once ChatGPT search rolls out to free users. The bigger question is whether Apple Intelligence users will get early access for requests made through Apple’s ChatGPT integration or if they’ll have to wait alongside everyone else.
Nevertheless, it’s a significant step into a future where traditional search engines will fall by the wayside, and Siri will be able to respond to queries with much more helpful and contextual answers. It’s also promising that OpenAI is taking a far more cautious and curated approach to its sources, helping it to avoid the insanity of Google’s attempts to layer AI on top of its existing search engine.
