OpenAI Expands ChatGPT Search Feature to Users Without an OpenAI Account

OpenAI is expanding the ChatGPT Search feature to everyone without the need to sign up for the platform. The company announced the rollout of the feature on Wednesday and highlighted that anyone across the world can access the AI platform and start using the AI firm’s native search engine-powered feature to ask queries. Notably, the company first released the feature in November 2024 to paid subscribers. Later in December 2024, it was rolled out to the users on the free tier as well.

ChatGPT Search Rolling Out to Everyone

In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), the official handle of OpenAI announced the expansion of the search feature. With this, anyone visiting the ChatGPT website can ask the chatbot real-time queries that require sourcing the information from the web.

Gadgets 360 staff members were able to see the feature on the Android app as well. However, it appears to not have been rolled out to the iOS app at the time of writing this. It might be rolled out in the coming days.

For those without an OpenAI account, the feature will be powered by the GPT-4o AI model. On the ChatGPT interface, users will see a globe icon placed next to the ‘Attach file’ icon in the text field. Tapping the globe icon will manually trigger the web search mode, and the chatbot will only use information found on the web to answer user responses.

The feature also displays the source of the information in two ways. After every sentence, wherever the information was used, a clickable icon highlights the particular source. The list of sources, also clickable, is also mentioned at the bottom of the response. OpenAI has not announced any rate limits for the ChatGPT Search feature for unregistered users. Those on the free tier do not have a rate limit for the feature.

Separately, a recent report claimed that the feature is vulnerable to prompt injection techniques. It was found that if a website uses hidden text to send misinformation, the AI tool picks them up and starts generating biased output. It is unclear when OpenAI has fixed the issue.