So apparently OpenAI is planning to release an AI-powered search called SearchGPT to rival Google. Ars Technica already makes the first point I would make: “New tool may solve a web-search problem partially caused by AI-generated junk online.” Create a problem for everyone else and then release a tool to solve that problem that you created? Ingenious.
But I just don’t get how generative “AI” can produce better search results. Sure, I can see how it might - might - produce better search queries using its predictive abilities, but what does “AI” bring to search that isn’t already there? Just the ability to remember context of previous searches? That can already be done with existing search engines, with a bit of work.
Ugh, this still seems like a contrived use for software that already exists that didn’t have a use case in the first place. And I can’t imagine that it will be too long before someone figures out how to game this system too, or it’s just outright gamed from inside the house.
Can anyone help me see how this is, in any way, an exciting or useful development?
With a little imagination I can see the buisnesscase here. Especially now that Alphabet has gone full enshitification on their search product.
What generative AI can do for search? Im with you, I cant see it.
I feel like the reason that Google is full-on enshittified now has a lot to do with the proliferation of generated AI garbage, so I’m failing to see how a search engine from one of the major purveyors of that generated AI garbage will be in any way better.
To me, this seems like OpenAI taking a roundabout way to scrape more data without the ethical concerns of plagiarism. They’ll say, “oh, we’re just indexing all of this content only to make SearchGPT better” and everybody else is like, “oh, okay, well that’s fine I guess” while somebody in the back room is just feeding all this now-“legal” data into ChatGPT.
I think the whole point of AI-assisted search is to be able to understand what the searcher really intends with their search queries, but generative and predictive AI can’t know that. The AI would have to know who I am, what I’m into (even if I’ve never searched for something before), and what I mean when I look for something based on all of my previous searches that it remembers. The context is key, and yet there’s no way for a public AI to have the required context for all of its users, which would make their search useful.
Blaming AI for Google being shit isn’t accurate. Google was shit ever since they made everyone else follow SEO patterns that took away the natural search we used to have. You used to get top of the search if a lot of other websites referenced you. That made sense. The SEO garbage that Google started is what killed search to begin with. AI is just using what was already put there by Google. I’m not arguing that SearchGPT is going to be a better AI search than Google. I’m just arguing that search was garbage before AI was a glint in Sam Altman’s eye and it was Google’s fault.
That’s a fair point, and I do not disagree with you. Perhaps it would be better to say that the generated AI garbage completed the enshittification by taking the already broken (by Google) search system and gaming it faster than any human being could do it.
It was pretty useless, but generative AI ensured that it would be almost irrecoverably useless unless Google goes back to the simpler times when they were actually just ranking stuff by who and how many connect to it.
Yep, totally agree. I don’t think having AI sift through shitposts and other AI garbage is going to help the situation, either. Google, OpenAI, and all the rest are gambling that saying their system has AI will entice people to think it’s better search. Google has already proved that it’s not seeing as it can’t tell the difference between shitposts, fan fiction, and facts. I don’t think SearchGPT is going to be any better, either. The only difference between the two is that the GPTs don’t tend to give you information sources. So it may not be as obvious as it is with Google. Unless they start giving you sources and then it’ll be two similar products from two different brands.