OpenAI has launched the test version of its long-awaited search engine, which summarizes and cites information from various sources, including news from business partners such as the Wall Street Journal and the Atlantic Magazine.

The tool, called SearchGPT, summarizes information from websites, including news portals, and allows users to ask follow-up questions as with the popular chatbot ChatGPT. The sources are linked in parentheses at the end of each answer.

An additional sidebar feature displays further results and sources with relevant information to users.

SearchGPT represents OpenAI's most direct challenge to Google's dominance in the search engine market to date, since the release of ChatGPT in 2022 caught the technology company off guard. This year, Google has widely introduced its own AI search feature, which synthesizes information from multiple web sources. Shares of Google's parent company Alphabet fell by nearly 3% on Thursday.

Other AI companies like Perplexity, which is backed by Jeff Bezos and founded by a former OpenAI employee, are also entering the search competition.

Here is your translated heading in English:

**OpenAI announced that it has collaborated with publishers to develop the search tool. In recent months, OpenAI representatives have shown publishers mock-ups of the feature, who are increasingly concerned about how AI could change their newsrooms and news gathering, particularly in light of recent declines in online traffic for many publishers.**

Publishers fear that AI-powered search tools from OpenAI or Google will provide complete answers based on news content, eliminating the need to click on an article link, thereby reducing their online traffic and ad revenue.

The heading translates to:

"It is unclear how much traffic a product like SearchGPT could bring to publishers. 'We expect to learn more about user behavior during the test,' an OpenAI spokesperson said.

Publishers are cautious about tech partnerships after more than a decade of experience with the whims of technology companies like Facebook and Google, whose product changes sometimes led to drastic changes in online traffic.

Here is the translated heading in English:

"Their concerns were further fueled when Perplexity used a Forbes magazine story for one of its products last month without mentioning the news source until the end of the page. CEO Aravind Srinivas attributed the issue to 'rough edges' of the product.

Nevertheless, many publishers see value in selling access to their intellectual property to AI companies, which require large amounts of data and content to refine their AI systems and develop new products like SearchGPT.

Last year, OpenAI formed partnerships with a number of news publishers, including Politico, Axel Springer (parent company of Business Insider), the Associated Press, Le Monde, the Financial Times, and IAC's Dotdash Meredith, which includes publications such as People and Better Homes & Gardens.

In some of these deals, OpenAI has granted publishers millions of dollars in cash and cloud credits in exchange for the right to train new generative AI models with their content.

Other publishers, including the New York Times, have decided to fight OpenAI and its supporter Microsoft in court, claiming in lawsuits that their content was used to train OpenAI's systems without permission. OpenAI has stated that the Times' lawsuit is unfounded.

Many of the conversations OpenAI had with publishers about the search tool focused on how their news content is used in response to inquiries. On Thursday, OpenAI stated that publishers can control how their content appears in SearchGPT.

In a statement that was part of OpenAI's press release on Thursday, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson said that CEO Sam Altman and other OpenAI executives understood that any AI-powered search must be based on "high-quality, most reliable information from trusted sources.

SearchGPT is being tested as a separate product for now, but OpenAI plans to eventually integrate it into its main ChatGPT service. News publishers and content creators will be among the first testers, and OpenAI will offer a waitlist for US users to sign up to try the tool.

The Wall Street Journal owner News Corp has a content licensing partnership with OpenAI.