OpenAI's SearchGPT: It's About the Optics

This morning we awoke to one story dominating the tech news landscape: OpenAI is “expanding into search,” launching SearchGPT, a prototype that appears to be a direct competitor to Google (and Bing and Perplexity, not that they really matter). But despite the voluminous coverage, my initial take is that once the hype cycle passes – I give it a day or two – OpenAI’s true goal will emerge: fixing the optics of its approach to training data.

The company doesn’t have the resources to take on Google on its core turf. So why announce SearchGPT now? This is speculation, but I’d wager it’s because the company is in a perilous place. It built its business – one that could lose up to $5 billion this year – by scarfing up the entire Internet, mostly without permission. It’s facing a serious backlash from both established publishers and governments. In response, it’s been busy cutting deals with as many partners as it can, and this search prototype feels driven by those optics.

In the blog post announcing SearchGPT, the company showcases its partnerships – the first pull quote is from the CEO of The Atlantic, extolling OpenAI for building a search product that “values, respects, and protects journalism and publishers.” The post goes on to say “SearchGPT is designed to help users connect with publishers by prominently citing and linking to them in searches. Responses have clear, in-line, named attribution and links so users know where information is coming from and can quickly engage with even more results in a sidebar with source links.” In other words, we’re the good guys here.?

OpenAI takes pains to note that SearchGPT will not be a standalone product, but rather is a “temporary prototype” that will eventually be folded into ChatGPT. It continues by stating “Importantly, SearchGPT is about search and is separate from training OpenAI’s generative AI foundation models. Sites can be surfaced in search results even if they opt out of generative AI training.” This sounds an awful lot like the company pleading with the providers of its core data: “Please, please, don’t opt out of our crawler. This new search product is different! It’s going to help you! We promise, we’ll send you traffic back, just like Google used to do.”

The post ends with a silly quote from the CEO of Dow Jones, always a go-to for horrified reproach when it comes to the role of publishers in the world. “For the heavens to be in equilibrium, the relationship between technology and content must be symbiotic and provenance must be protected.”

OK boomer. I’m happy to be wrong, but this whole announcement feels like an exercise in public relations.