OpenAI is developing a web search capability for ChatGPT that would let it retrieve information from the internet and provide answers with citations, which of course would make it a direct competitor to Google and the AI search startup Perplexity. This is according to a report from Bloomberg.

SEE ALSO: IS OPEN AI ANNOUNCING ITS GOOGLE SEARCH COMPETITOR ON MONDAY?

Microsoft has been angling to get a bigger hold of the search market for years, as well as wrestle away Google's dominance in the search Market. 

The addition of citations to ChatGPT results would do two things:

1) it would level the argument against its critics that say that they're not providing any benefit to the people they trained their data on. These people claim copyright as well as the need to get paid for the work they've provided without their consent to ChatGPT. 

2) It would also hit Google where it hurts, i.e. the search engine and all the revenue that's made Google the reigning kng of the search market for two decades. 

This new Chat GPT feature would allow ChatGPT to answer questions with information sourced from the web, including Wikipedia entries and blog posts, with citations included. 

For all of us that are creators, this gives us a golden new opportunity to drive traffic to our website, blogs, social media videos and more. this would be a great opportunity for us. Microsoft copilot and Google Gemini already do some of this, and the next Frontier in terms of driving traffic to any of our platforms is to optimize our offerings for all of these AI platforms. 

Some versions of this feature could integrate images with textual responses where applicable. For example, if a user inquires about changing a doorknob, ChatGPT might display a diagram to aid in explaining the process.

This development was initially hinted at in a report by The Information in February, though specific functionalities like this had not been disclosed before. 

The enhancement of ChatGPT's capabilities comes at a crucial time, as the AI industry sees intensified competition in the search domain, a sector that is proving to be increasingly vital. 

The speculation about OpenAI's search ambitions has been rampant on social media platforms like X, formerly Twitter, where users recently noted the web address search.chatgpt.com pointing briefly to OpenAI's main chatbot interaction site, though it typically shows a "not found" message.