OpenAI’s planned search engine competitor could launch as soon as Monday next week (May 13), it has been reported.

Reuters say that two people close to the subject have given Monday as a likely date for the announcement, with the caveat that it’s not set in stone and could be changed at the last minute.

OpenAI is facing stiff competition in the AI field from Claude and Copilot, so diversifying into real-time search seems like a natural expansion. However, with companies like Bezos-backed Perplexity and tech giant Google exploring artificial intelligence (AI)-powered search, OpenAI will have their work cut out for them.

There is some speculation that the announcement on Monday is a deliberate attempt by OpenAI to deflect attention away from Google’s annual I/O conference, which begins on Tuesday and will surely feature updates on AI tech Google has been working on, along with other news from the California-based company.

What is OpenAI search?

We know very little about what OpenAI’s search competitor will look like or how it will function as the company itself has not made any official announcements yet. However, we can make some educated guesses.

According to an insider, the search app would combine the search engine capabilities of Microsoft Bing with ChatGPT to generate deeper search results with more context and additional information. Responses could include citations from other sites like Wikipedia, as well as incorporating images and diagrams if appropriate.

For example, if you searched for “how to clean the u-bend in the sink” the results might include a blog post about the topic, a diagram of how to unscrew the pipes, and a step-by-step guide. Future improvement on the algorithm could see it expanded to include things like contextual info such as how to find your water stopcock.

Featured image credit: generated with Ideogram