Over the past week or so, I've seen two signals that OpenAI will launch its own search engine of sorts soon. The first is that search.chatgpt.com is showing in the log files for some servers, and also, yesterday, there were more business-oriented rumors of OpenAI launching a search engine on May 9th.
Ashutosh Shrivastava shared a screenshot that shows OpenAI's recent SSL certificate logs revealed the domain search.chatgpt.com. He said that this "may indicate that OpenAI is developing a search functionality." He shared this with me on X and shared this screenshot of the log:
The logs came from Jimmy Apples, who posted this over here:
Thanks @apples_jimmy for logs.https://t.co/Ppmn3B9NRS
— AshutoshShrivastava (@ai_for_success) April 28, 2024
It took me a few days to cover it because I went offline for Passover, but it looks like Analutics India Magizine covered it and wrote, "OpenAI is likely to announce a new search engine soon, revealed Jimmy Apples, stating that the company is looking to host an event this month, tentatively on May 9, 2024, at 10 a.m." That is a very specific date and time.
“They were advertising for in house events staff and events marketing back in January, they just hired an events manager last month” said Jimmy Apples, hinting at a big deal event coming in the month of June, where OpenAI might release its next model — “what ever sam decides to call it.”
I suspect whatever OpenAI launches, it won't be exactly like Google Search but we will see. I do like that we are seeing more alternatives to Google Search, not just from Bing but also Perplexity AI and others.
Forum discussion at X.