2 min read
A new report shows that ChatGPT uses Google Search data to provide real-time answers for fast-moving topics. The Information found that OpenAI uses a paid scraping service to draw results from Google Search.
Industry Stakes
A former Google engineer demonstrated that ChatGPT could return information from web pages that were only indexed by Google. This test supports the claim that ChatGPT is tapping Google-indexed content to answer live questions. OpenAI leaders told a US court that the company asked Google for direct access to its search index. Google declined that request. OpenAI also said that results from its other search provider suffered from serious quality issues. This reality helps explain why the company sought alternate routes to fresh web data.
Independent tests have shown that ChatGPT can surface material that only appears in Google results. These experiments used controlled pages and confirmed that the chatbot can reflect content that Google alone indexed. This means ChatGPT may rely on Google data to cover news, financial markets, and sports where its base model lacks live feeds.
What Leaders Say
OpenAI executives framed search as a core need for their product and described limits in their current search partners. At the same time, the OpenAI chief has said he rarely uses Google Search personally. This difference brings out the complicated relationships between AI products and the web infrastructure on which they are based.
However, ChatGPT has become a 700 million user a week. It still needs to travel a long way to become as large as Google, which received over 5 trillion search requests a year. The free business model is seeing OpenAI consider new sources of revenue like subscriptions, advertisements, and affiliate partnerships to transform free users into paying customers in a similar way that Google has commercialized shopping results. It is unclear whether Google will license any product or shopping data to OpenAI, but it is highly dependent on Google tools, and the tussle between the two concerning the future of search has become fierce.
