ChatGPT Plus shows results in prompts now that Search is a thing
I've been a ChatGPT Plus user for about a year, and I think the $20/month subscription is worth it to access some of OpenAI’s best ChatGPT features. One of them is the newly released ChatGPT Search product that competes directly against Google Search. It’s probably the AI product some people at Google have been dreading all along when ChatGPT went viral in late 2022.
I can’t say that I needed ChatGPT Search that much since ChatGPT Plus already searches the web during prompts. Also, I haven’t turned ChatGPT Search into my default search engine, and I say that as someone who has ditched Google Search long before generative AI chatbots were all the rage.
ChatGPT Interface and Search
But I appreciate what OpenAI has done with the ChatGPT interface now that ChatGPT Search is an actual product. Whenever ChatGPT has to search the web to answer my prompts, it now displays sources by default. Not only that, but the UI gets a new tab where I see multiple sources that I can visit to double-check the chatbot’s accuracy.
Remember that I’ve been telling you for nearly two years that ChatGPT and its kind are prone to hallucinations. That is inventing things that aren’t factually correct. Google’s big Search fumble with AI Overviews will always come to mind. That genAI product thought putting glue on pizza was safe because it couldn’t discern irony in things it read on Reddit during training.
Improved User Experience with ChatGPT Search
But I appreciate what OpenAI has done with the ChatGPT interface now that ChatGPT Search is an actual product. Whenever ChatGPT has to search the web to answer my prompts, it now displays sources by default. Not only that, but the UI gets a new tab where I see multiple sources that I can visit to double-check the chatbot’s accuracy.
Remember that I’ve been telling you for nearly two years that ChatGPT and its kind are prone to hallucinations. That is inventing things that aren’t factually correct. Google’s big Search fumble with AI Overviews will always come to mind. That genAI product thought putting glue on pizza was safe because it couldn’t discern irony in things it read on Reddit during training.
Fact-Checking Made Easier
If you use ChatGPT Search to search the web, you’ll always get sources at the end of the answer. This will make fact-checking ChatGPT answers even easier than before. ChatGPT Plus users would have access to sources for the claims ChatGPT makes. The chatbot will probably continue to hallucinate. But you’ll be able to verify the information without providing Custom Instructions that make ChatGPT show links to sources. ChatGPT does it all by default.
OpenAI rolled out these UI updates only a few days ago, but I haven’t really paid attention to them. If I were still using Google Search, these new ChatGPT Plus and ChatGPT Search features would be enough to have me consider ditching it.
