TheChek News Flow

• OpenAI pitched apps and websites on ‘natural language’ search product to help change how customers and readers interact with the sites

OpenAI is preparing to launch a frontal assault on Google.

The ChatGPT owner recently considered developing a web browser that it would combine with its chatbot, and it has separately discussed or struck deals to power search features for travel, food, real estate and retail websites, according to people who have seen prototypes or designs of the products. OpenAI has spoken about the search product with website and app developers such as Condé Nast, Redfin, Eventbrite and Priceline, these people said.

OpenAI also has discussed powering artificial intelligence features on devices made by Samsung, a key Google business partner, similar to a deal OpenAI recently struck with Apple, according to people who were briefed about the situation at OpenAI.

OpenAI could decide not to launch the browser, though earlier this year it hired two people who were instrumental in the development of Google's Chrome browser.

If OpenAI launches some or all of these products, it would become an even bigger competitor to Google, which dominates the browser market with Chrome and the search market with Google Search, and powers Samsung’s phones with its Android software. More recently, Google’s Gemini AI began powering features on Samsung devices, such as providing a text summary of a voice recording or using image-generating technology to edit photos.

The state of talks between Samsung and OpenAI couldn’t be learned, but Google has been preparing for the possibility of competing with OpenAI to power such features, said a person with knowledge of the situation. For Samsung, it makes sense to have more than one potential provider of such technology as it negotiates the terms of deals.

A Google spokesperson said companies using Android can work with other technology providers. Spokespeople for OpenAI and the companies that OpenAI is talking to about search features either didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment or didn’t have a comment on the record.

Google has been scrambling to catch up to OpenAI on the AI chatbot front. Last year it launched its Gemini chatbot and made search results more conversational, mimicking ChatGPT.

ChatGPT generates billions of dollars a year in revenue from subscriptions and has added searchlike features that show real-time information from the web, in part with the help of Microsoft’s search technology. But ChatGPT hasn’t visibly hurt Google search yet, even if some people are using it as a partial replacement for Google.

Still, ChatGPT is growing quickly and currently dominates the nascent market for AI chatbots. Making a web browser could help OpenAI have more control over a primary gateway through which people use the web, as well as further boost ChatGPT, which has more than 300 million weekly users just two years after its launch. It isn’t clear how a ChatGPT browser’s features would differ from those of other browsers.

In a signal of its interest in a browser, several months ago OpenAI hired Ben Goodger, a founding member of the Chrome team at Google.

But OpenAI isn’t remotely close to launching a browser, multiple people said. Launching a browser is timely and complicated because browser providers need to ensure people’s data doesn’t leak to websites, and the browser needs to work with various types of extensions to adequately compete with incumbent browsers, among other things.