Google’s dominance in online search has been virtually undisputed for over 20 years, but a real challenger might have finally arrived. As of Wednesday, OpenAI no longer requires you to log in to use ChatGPT’s search engine. In fact, you don’t even need an account.
“ChatGPT search is now available to everyone in regions where ChatGPT is available,” OpenAI noted on its website in an update. “No signup required.”
OpenAI launched its search engine on October 31st, 2024, granting access to paid subscribers and SearchGPT waitlist users. It then rolled out to free users on December 16, but now, anyone can search on ChatGPT by visiting ChatGPT.com and clicking the “Search” button.
“The search model is a fine-tuned version of GPT-4o, post-trained using novel synthetic data generation techniques, including distilling outputs from OpenAI o1-preview,” OpenAI explained last year. “ChatGPT search leverages third-party search providers, as well as content provided directly by our partners, to provide the information users are looking for.”
Now that everyone has unrestricted access to ChatGPT search, it will be fascinating to see how many people try to ditch Google for good, and how successful they are at doing so.
This is the latest in a flood of major updates and new releases from OpenAI in recent weeks as the company pushes back against DeepSeek mania. Within the last two weeks alone, OpenAI has launched two AI agents: Operator and Deep Research.
