As of 31 October it is now available ChatGPT Searchthe official search engine of ChatGPT. Only available in the following versions premiumstarts fully integrated into the tool.
Using it is very easy, when you add your question, in the writing box, you can select a world ball located next to the document attachment tool. This will indicate to ChatGPT you want do an internet search.
Y ChatGPT will search the internet, give you a developed answer and link you to its sources. Sounds great, doesn't it?
At first glance, we can already find a smoother operation and more accurate responses than the ones I had Perplexitythe first AI search engine. Also that this Google experiment in which he recommended people to eat stones and put glue on pizza.
For the time being, however, Google can breathe easy. While the conversational responses are a great advantage over the traditional method, it fails in something that the traditional method also fails in. SEO on TikTokThe other major competitor is the speed with which they can get an answer on a recent issue.
One of the keys to this problem is that ChatGPT Search cannot access subscription-based information content.
As everything is clearer with an example, let me show you the great problem of ChatGPT Search.
A clear example: the expelled Drag Race contestants.
As I had read that ChatGPT Search made errors in sports results, election results and other current affairs.I decided to ask a question about current national and international television news. In this case, I asked who had been the last eliminated from Drag Race Spain and Drag Race UK. Here is the screenshot of the answer, because it is very explanatory of the problem:
As I imagine you may not be a follower of these competitions, this is what happened:
Regarding Drag Race España, I got the name of the eliminated queen and the episode in which it happened right. However, the other two sentences he gave me were "false" information.
I put the inverted commas because there was an acting challenge, but not in the seventh episode, but in the third. Moreover, in that episode, Angelita not only managed to avoid elimination, but she won the show and won €2,500 and a hotel stay.
In the case of the BBC's Drag Race UK, all the information was correct, but it was two weeks late. The answer was therefore false, with two subsequent deletions not mentioned.
When I say that ChatGPT Search He lies, I mean things like that. He mixes real and false data because he really we are dealing with a statistical model, not with someone who thinks and can relate that it makes no sense for a contestant to have an outstanding performance and be eliminated at the same time. The Large Language Models (LLM)For the time being, they do not go as far as that.
Similarly, in the second case, we see another problem. I gather that you gave me the information from a fortnight ago because you found more results talking about it. But having more results does not imply that something is more true.
By the way, we did the Google search and the results were correct.
Perfect in Drag Race Spain with a result from the channel where the show is broadcast.
At Drag Race UK we need to click on the Wikipedia and fandom stats pages which are updated on the fly. This result is interesting because it allows us to answer the question on any given day, as it brings all the information together.
Statistical models
Here it is worth remembering the words of the researcher Emily Benderof the University of Washingtonquoted by Xatakawhen he said that "LLMs are nothing more than statistical models of the distribution of words in a text (...), if someone uses an LLM as a substitute for a search engine and the output they get is correct, that was just a fluke".
Against the opinion of BenderI'm sure you can tell me that the responses of these modelsstarting with ChatGPT, are increasingly accurate. The improvement is remarkable and it seems strange to put it down to chance, especially when work has been done specifically to improve results.
However, by the very nature of the LLMit seems that the fields in which ChatGPT Search is better, are the same fields in which ChatGPT was better in general. That is, without activating the search option.
So what good is it ChatGPT Search? Let's have a look at it.
Conversational searches
Perhaps the main advantage is that you can ask in a more conversational way. You don't have to think about how to phrase the question or the search keyword, and it's ad-free.
At a time when the content for SEO is over-optimised, asking to be given directly what you want to know (which is something they already try to do Google with their snipets) may be of interest to some users.
However, I have to mention one drawback. The sources are, equally, the content is the internet. That is to say, you won't find anything special that you can't easily find on Google.. Moreover, as reliability is not at its highest, you still have to go and check the sources, so you have to check the sources.t would end up being like googling.
The point to value is, basically, the way in which the information is presented to you in order to answer your questions and in a summarised way. No scrolling until you find what you want to know.
Avoiding advertising
If it looks like a good advantage avoid advertising. We are paying for the tool, so what less to avoid those awkward ads on top of our results.
It is true that the use of ad blockers is common on desktop, but not so on mobile. Thus, with the use of ChatGPT Search you are somewhat assured of access to the most relevant or repeated information, without being influenced by the price a company has set for its bid.
This makes the results seem more reliable to many people. This is not necessarily the case, because the quality of the ad and the relevance to the search also influences whether the ad will appear, but it does allow you to find more organic top results.
The use of natural language
It is directly related to the conversational searchesbut I want to emphasise this. The use of natural language makes the search much more convenient for the user.
You don't even need to know exactly what you are looking for and you can go narrowing the search with successive queriesThe tool will provide you with the appropriate explanations.
That is, it can work more easily than Google for research. Also because it can give multi-response in a single search. For example, in the example I gave above, I asked about two different results from two different competitive TV programmes from two different countries, broadcast in one case by a public broadcaster and in the other on a private streaming platform.
Yes, the results were false, but what I am referring to here is that in a single consultation, answered two different questions for me. At the moment, this is not done by Google, TikTok or YouTube.
This is also very interesting for get results or summaries that could be included on different pages or for different searches. For example, we can ask for a list of the singers who have sold the most records in Spain, Angola and Nepal.
In fact, I have done so and although he told me that there is no exact data, has generated for me an approximationsomething Google could never do.
In Spain he has highlighted Julio Iglesias, Enrique Iglesias and Rocío Dúrcal. In Angola to Bonga, Anselmo Raph and C4 Pedro and in Nepal to Narayan Gopal, Aruna Lama and Nabin K Bhattarai, all with a brief background information about each artist and the ease or otherwise of finding the information.
Technical or practical information
Finally, it is necessary to talk about the technical or practical information. Especially when it comes to other programming languages or language translation. In this respect, ChatGPT is often useful until a high level of complexity is reached.
For example, if we ask about idioms such as "taking the piss out of the water" or "from here to there", he is first able to identify that they are not popular expressions and does not translate them literally, but he does not get valid examples for the first case.
Here we can see the last key. If we ask ChatGPT without activating Search this is the answer:
In this case, the question is much better. The same seems to be true for questions about code or programming languages. It works better with trained data than with what you can find online.
In any case, ChatGPT Search is configured as a new functionality of ChatGPT that can be useful, but it does not solve the problems of reliability of information, especially for current affairs queries. It is a first step, perhaps friendlier than a Google query, but it is, for the moment, far from being the destination.
