OpenAI may be about to go after Google’s main source of income. The generative AI company will reportedly reveal it will launch its own AI-based search engine on Monday, May 13.
The report comes from Reuters, citing unnamed sources. It does add that the actual date of the AI search engine announcement could change. If it does stick with the May 13 date, it will come just one day before Google’s annual I/O developers conference on May 14.
Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported, again via unnamed sources, that the search engine will use its ChatGPT AI chatbot as its base. It will reportedly search for answers on the web to questions and inquiries and will also cite citations for its search results.
An OpenAI search engine would not only compete with Google Search and Microsoft’s Bing search engine, it would also be competing with another AI-based search startup called Perplexity. That company, founded by a former OpenAI researcher, recently secured $73.6 million in Series B funding from investors like Nvidia and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Google has also been working on its own AI-based search engine called the SGE (Search Generative Experience) in its Search Labs.
While Microsoft continues to be a major financial and development partner to OpenAI, the company that’s has its co-founder Sam Altman as its CEO has been branching off and reportedly making other deals. In late April, it was reported that OpenAI had entered into discussions with Apple. The two companies reportedly had talks about adding AI tech into Apple’s next version of its iPhone operating system, iOS 18.
Earlier this week, OpenAI revealed it had started testing an AI “deepfake” detector so that images that were created by the company’s DALL-E AI art maker could be identified as being made by that model. There’s no word on when that tool will be officially released.