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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Reports reveal that OpenAI uses Google Search data to answer some of users’ questions.
- The topics that use Google Search data mostly surround news, sports, and financial markets.
- OpenAI retrieves the Google Search data using a third-party web-scraping tool.
As more people consult ChatGPT for general inquiries, reports are pointing to OpenAI, the AI-powered chatbot’s parent company, leveraging Google Search’s index to provide users with answers.
OpenAI is using Google Search data to help ChatGPT answer questions, particularly about news, sports, and financial markets, according to The Information. The article said that these current event topics are where OpenAI’s proprietary tools struggle to give accurate responses.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET’s parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
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Google Search may be one of ChatGPT’s biggest rivals. The chatbot has accelerated Search’s foray into AI-powered search summaries, subsequently lowering traffic from websites that appear in Google’s search results.
The Information also reported that OpenAI retrieves Search data from SerpApi, a web-scraping firm. According to SerpApi‘s website, the company offers data extraction services to AI models, saying that search results data best builds large datasets for machine learning models.
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Abishek Iyer, a former Google engineer, conducted an experiment to prove ChatGPT uses Google Search indexes to generate information. In his experiment, posted to X, Iyer created a fake word, included it on a hidden page, and indexed it in Google’s search engine, ensuring the term was excluded from other engines like Bing. Once the term was indexed in Google, ChatGPT could define it using Iyer’s exact words found on his hidden page.
OpenAI and Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Previously, OpenAI asserted that its search capabilities were powered by an in-house web crawler, and with data from publishers the company has licensing agreements with. Google was not a partnered company, denying OpenAI access to its search index to supply ChatGPT with search results.
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