ChatGPT search rumors killed...BUT…

In a post on ex-Twitter platform, X, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman denied rumors that OpenAI is announcing a ChatGPT-powered search engine, but did say they will be livestreaming a demo on the OpenAI website, on Monday, May 13th, at 10 am PT (1 pm ET), just one day before Google starts its major developer conference–Google I/O.

What will OpenAI be announcing?

It’s expected that the live stream will showcase some “Spring Updates” centred around demoing new ChatGPT and GPT-4 features that Altman believes are magic, and that we will love.

“Not gpt-5, not a search engine, but we’ve been hard at work on some new stuff we think people will love! feels like magic to me.” – Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO

Speculation about what these updates could be varies from a Sora update or the launch of GPT-4.5 which will address the knowledge limitation issues that the current GPT-4 and GPT-3.5 have.

There are also rumors circulating that OpenAI will announce a multimodal digital assistant which, while not a traditional search engine, would still allow users to use AI to search the web for things. If this is true, it will be able to do things like link to a camera, process real-world information, and speak to you, with more information about what it sees. This would directly threaten Google as Google Lens, Google Assistant, and Google Gemini already do this.

Although ChatGpt does this too, it doesn’t currently do it through one, single interface. This means that OpenAI’s update could be the announcement of an upgraded GPT model that offers faster, more accurate responses, with image input and audible responses, packaged up into one app.