San Francisco. OpenAI is launching a ChatGPT-powered search engine that positions the artificial intelligence company to compete directly with Google, potentially altering the way internet users access news, sports scores, and other real-time information.

On Thursday, OpenAI announced that it would begin rolling out a new search feature to paid ChatGPT users, with plans to expand access to all users in the future. A preview version of the feature was made available in July to a limited group of users and publishers.

The original ChatGPT, introduced in 2022, was trained on vast amounts of online text but lacked the ability to provide answers about current events not included in its training data.

In May, Google revamped its search engine by incorporating AI-generated written summaries that now frequently appear at the top of search results. These summaries are designed to quickly address user queries, allowing them to find answers without necessarily clicking on links to other websites.

Despite Google’s updates, the AI-generated content has sometimes led to inaccuracies, highlighting the risks associated with relying on AI chatbots that can produce erroneous information, a phenomenon known as hallucination.

The shift by AI companies to deliver news sourced from professional journalists has raised concerns among some media organizations. Notably, The New York Times is among several news outlets that have filed lawsuits against OpenAI and its partner Microsoft for alleged copyright infringement. In October, News Corp, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal and New York Post, also sued another AI search engine, Perplexity.

In a blog post on Thursday, OpenAI stated that its new search engine was developed with input from news partners, including The Associated Press and News Corp. The search feature will provide links to sources, such as news articles and blog posts, although it remains unclear whether these links will direct users to the original sources of the information presented by the chatbot.

The Associated Press and OpenAI have established a licensing and technology agreement, granting OpenAI access to certain portions of AP's text archives.

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