OpenAI Improves Web Search Tool in ChatGPT, Can Now Handle More Complex Queries

OpenAI quietly improved ChatGPT's web search-based responses last week. The San Francisco-based artificial intelligence (AI) firm has improved both the quality of responses and its instruction-following ability. Additionally, the web search tool can also handle longer, and more complex queries. Another interesting improvement comes to image-based web searches. OpenAI says the chatbot can now take an image of an object and find information from publicly listed websites. Notably, last week the company also expanded the features in ChatGPT's Projects feature and made Canvas downloadable.

Web Search in ChatGPT Gets an Upgrade

In its changelog posted on June 13, the AI giant listed several improvements to web search that users can now access. OpenAI's native search engine was rolled out to all users in October 2024, and since then, the company has consistently increased both its capabilities as well as rate limit.

With the latest update, web search in ChatGPT will provide more up-to-date and comprehensive information to users. A particular focus area was the quality of responses. The company says the web search tool is now better at understanding the intent behind a user query, and can tailor its responses accordingly. Additionally, it can also handle longer conversational contexts, which means even if the direct prompt does not capture what the user wants, ChatGPT can find it from the conversation leading to the query.

The latter is a result of the improved memory function, which the company recently rolled out. OpenAI has been integrating this capability in different ChatGPT features, with the most recent example being Projects. Projects in ChatGPT can now reference past projects in conversations.

Apart from this, web search is now also better at following instructions. This will be more evident in longer conversations where the chatbot can now narrow down the scope of the query based on what the user said. OpenAI says this will reduce repetitive responses.

Another interesting upgrade is the feature's ability to run multiple searches for a single query. The chatbot can now draw out more information by also running searches for additional topics, wherever necessary.

Finally, ChatGPT can now also run web searches based on an image uploaded by the user. Gadgets 360 staff members tested out the feature, and it was able to correctly identify the object in the image and find answer to the query added alongside the image.

OpenAI also listed the current limitations and issues with the feature. Currently, users can experience a longer wait time before the response is generated. Additionally, the AI might opt for transparent chain-of-thought (CoT) for even simple queries. Notably, CoT denotes the model is using reasoning ability, which is typically kept for only complex queries. The company might fix these issues in the near future.