ChatGPT search is now live – and it could be the Google replacement you’ve been looking for

Look out Google, ChatGPT can now search the web in a much better way than before

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

We’ve been hearing rumors about aChatGPT searchengine for a while now, but now it’s finally live. Rather than being a whole new website called ‘SearchGPT’, as many had expected, it’s simply an upgrade to the existingChatGPTwebsite, and all the ChatGPT apps for Windows, Mac, and smartphones.

When you are talking to ChatGPT it will now ask you if it should search the web, if it feels that would produce better results for you, but you can also manually instigate a web search at any time. As you’d expect, ChatGPT search is a feature that’s available immediately for ChatGPT Plus subscribers, and all ChatGPT Plus and Team users will get it today. However, all SearchGPT waitlist users will also be getting access today. Enterprise and Edu users of ChatGPT will be getting access over the next few weeks.

How it works

If you look at your ChatGPT prompt bar you’ll see a new search icon called Search. Tap or click this and you will be searching the web using ChatGPT, rather than engaging in a conversation. It’s a bit like the AI summaries thatGooglealready provides in its search engine, but there is an easily identifiable link to sources after each piece of text. When clicked, the sources open up a sidebar that shows citations.

In case you were wondering, the waitlist for SearchGPT is now closed, so if you haven’t already signed up, it’s now too late. As for when the rest of the ChatGPT free tier will get it,OpenAIsays, “We’ll roll out to all Free users over the coming months.”

What’s interesting is that ChatGPT has partnered with various industry sources to provide its own maps, that aren’tGoogle Maps, as well as weather, stocks, sports, and news information. OpenAI says it has “partnered with news and data providers to add up-to-date information and new visual designs for categories like weather, stocks, sports, news, and maps.”

ChatGPT Search is already looking enticing and could be the first real threat to Google in years. With ChatGPT Search, you’re essentially getting the natural language capabilities of ChatGPT blended with up-to-the-minute information from the web, and that could be just what people are searching for.

You might also like…

Get the best Black Friday deals direct to your inbox, plus news, reviews, and more.

Sign up to be the first to know about unmissable Black Friday deals on top tech, plus get all your favorite TechRadar content.

Graham is the Senior Editor for AI at TechRadar. With over 25 years of experience in both online and print journalism, Graham has worked for various market-leading tech brands including Computeractive, PC Pro, iMore, MacFormat, Mac|Life, Maximum PC, and more. He specializes in reporting on everything to do with AI and has appeared on BBC TV shows like BBC One Breakfast and on Radio 4 commenting on the latest trends in tech. Graham has an honors degree in Computer Science and spends his spare time podcasting and blogging.

Google Gemini is set to finally reach its full potential – and take over from Google Assistant – thanks to a major upgrade

Anthropic’s new Claude 3.5 Haiku AI model is 4 times more expensive than its predecessor

Australian Beach Volleyball Tour live stream: How to watch bronze and gold medal matches online for free, finals, start time