News

OpenAI Prepares To Make ChatGPT Search Available To All

The company is expanding its ChatGPT Search feature to all users, no subscription needed, offering web results, voice integration, and more.

Published

1 year ago

December 17, 2024

Nour Nasir

OpenAI

If you’ve been holding out to get your hands on ChatGPT Search, the wait is nearly over. During OpenAI’s latest “12 Days of OpenAI” livestream event, the company confirmed on Monday that the tool will soon be accessible to everyone — no subscription required. Previously limited to paying users, OpenAI now says the rollout will happen “over the coming months,” meaning anyone with an account will gain access.

Once the feature goes live, using ChatGPT Search will be pretty straightforward. If your query calls for updated information, the chatbot will automatically pull in real-time results from the web. There’s also a new web search icon built into the prompt bar, letting you manually trigger a search whenever you need it. For added convenience, OpenAI has introduced the option to set ChatGPT Search as your browser’s default search engine.

Alongside this update, OpenAI is also combining ChatGPT Search with its Advanced Voice mode. The integration means the chatbot’s voice assistant can now search the web for answers and respond conversationally. For instance, if you’re planning a trip, you could simply ask ChatGPT about the weather forecast for your journey. Thanks to the Search functionality, it’ll provide you with the most current information available.

Also Read: Foundster Is Dubai’s New AI-Driven Company Setup Service

To power these real-time capabilities, OpenAI has partnered with top news and data providers. As part of this expanded functionality, you’ll also start seeing widgets for live stock updates, sports scores, weather reports, and other helpful information. It’s becoming clear that ChatGPT Search isn’t just another AI feature — it’s quickly shaping up to be a strong alternative to Google.

In previous sessions of “12 Days of OpenAI,” the company has unveiled features like Sora and a new $200 ChatGPT Pro subscription plan. With four more days left in the series, OpenAI might still have a few surprises in store, but the move to make ChatGPT Search widely available is already one of its biggest highlights.

Related Topics:Artificial Intelligence ChatGPT OpenAI

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Instagram Now Lets You Tune Its Algorithm, But There’s One Big Catch

The new controls promise users “agency” over their feed, but asking to see more from accounts you actually follow returns an error.

Published

3 days ago

June 11, 2026

Nour Nasir

Instagram

Instagram has expanded its algorithm personalization feature to the main feed, letting users specify which topics they want surfaced more or less often in recommendations.

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri framed the change as a matter of user control. “I believe it’s in our best interest as a business to empower people to shape Instagram into something that works for them, and that people should be able to have a meaningful amount of agency over the products they spend so much time in,” he wrote on Threads.

Though it turns out that agency has limits. The controls only accept interest-based topics, such as “rescue dogs” or “parenting humor”. Requesting “posts from people I follow” returns no results, which is obviously a sore point for creators whose posts rarely reach their own audiences. Mosseri conceded the tension: “Who you follow used to be a meaningful tool people had for shaping their own experience, and as recommendations took over the main feed that tool quietly stopped working”.

Also Read: How To Find & Cancel Pending Instagram Requests

Instagram credits large language models for making its algorithms legible enough to personalize, and says it is “actively working on supporting requests for people, different moods or vibes, content types, and more” – potentially leading to a fully “bespoke” version of the app.