Update from May 10, 2024:
OpenAI has confirmed a product presentation for Monday, May 13th at 10AM PT, promising updates to ChatGPT and GPT-4. According to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, it will not be a search engine or GPT-5, but some new stuff "we've been hard at work on" and "we think people will love! Feels like magic to me."
OpenAI leaker Tibor Blaho has spotted the model names gpt-4l and gpt-4l-auto, which could be a faster and cheaper "GPT-4 lite" that could replace the outdated GPT-3.5. The mysterious GPT2 chatbots in the chatbot arena could be these two models.
The "auto" indicates a possible agent capability, which in turn could take over typical search engine tasks, such as browsing the web, finding information, and bringing it to you, without being explicitly labeled as such - but this is speculation. However, the improved code functionality of "GPT2" is an indication.
Update from May 8, 2024:
OpenAI's "SearchGPT" might be shown next Monday together with GPT-4-Lite
Bloomberg also confirms OpenAI's web product, which is presumably similar to Perplexity and can cite web sources. It's also said to be able to answer questions with images if they're relevant.
According to OpenAI leaker Jimmy Apples, the unveiling of the new search product will take place next Monday. Meanwhile, new GPT2 bots have appeared in the test arena, and it is now clear that they are connected to OpenAI.
Original article from May 6, 2024:
Google's big AI developer conference I/O starts on May 14th. Just before that, OpenAI may beat its big AI rival to the punch by launching its own search product.
It seems that OpenAI is about to launch its search engine, codenamed "Sonic". This is based on screenshots and information from web developer Tibor Blaho.
Blaho, who works on his own ChatGPT interface and constantly digs around in OpenAI's code, has revealed unannounced features several times in the past, sometimes weeks before their launch. Now he has found a slew of information about OpenAI's search product.
In addition to a text-based search, "SearchGPT" is supposed to offer an image search, various widgets for weather, calculators, sports, finance and time zones, as well as the option of follow-up questions, similar to the LLM search engine Perplexity.
Likely in preparation for the new search product, ChatGPT is now available at chatgpt.com instead of chat.openai.com.
Blaho has even posted a short video, which he claims is from OpenAI, showing the search interface. The video shows that the search engine will present results in a chat window similar to ChatGPT, with tabs for sources and images displayed at the top of the screen.
Video: Tibor Blaho via X
Something that looks like SearchGPT's developer preferences includes a prompt to rewrite snippets and titles. The system should summarize web pages in a sentence of no more than 300 characters and generate an appropriate title that describes the content of the web page.
By limiting the content to 300 characters, OpenAI could defuse the discussion about possible unlicensed use of web content and the associated potential loss of traffic to content providers' websites.
OpenAI has also reached agreements with several publishers, most recently with the Financial Times, whose news may be displayed in full in ChatGPT.
According to Blaho, the language model used for SearchGPT is either GPT-4 Lite (codenamed "Scallion" or "POR"), GPT-4, or GPT-3.5 ("Sahara-V"). GPT-4 Lite could be the GPT2 model that was recently tested in the chatbot arena. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has just hinted again that GPT2 has something to do with OpenAI.
It's an open secret that OpenAI is working on a search LLM. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has described such a project as very interesting, and the website The Information had previously leaked the first details about a possible OpenAI web search in February. Recently, it has taken incremental steps like making links in ChatGPT more visible as sources.
