ChatGPT is a powerful artificial intelligence platform that has grown beyond a simple chatbot. Despite its improvements, it has always lacked one important feature - the ability to search old threads. Fortunately, that is about to change as OpenAI has finally added a search feature.

If you use ChatGPT like I do, you probably have hundreds of short threads and a handful of very long threads. I try to create a new thread for each new topic so I can go back and ask follow-up questions later. But finding old threads can be a challenge.

The new search feature will initially only be available to paid members. Basically, anyone with a Plus or Teams account can use it, but free users will be able to use it starting next month.

This is only the latest in what appears to be a relatively minor update designed to turn ChatGPT into a more useful platform. It is also facing increasing competition from competitors such as Anthropic, Meta, and Google.

Recently OpenAI added function calls to allow users to create images and search the web using '/' in the chat bar. It has also been redesigned to be more “search-like” and autocomplete has been added to the main chat bar.

The new search function is not the expected “SearchGPT” but an “internal search” of messages, threads, and canvas projects. The latter is OpenAI's counterpart to Google, while the former makes OpenAI's own apps more useful.

A new magnifying glass icon at the top of the sidebar opens a search box from which you can view your history, start a new chat, or search for a specific chat you have previously created.

I tried it and it works fine, although it is closer to searching your email than searching a website on Google. The results are a bit bland with not much interpretation or filtering.

I tried to find a chat about a space game I am building and the first result was me asking ChatGPT what it knew about me - it mentioned a space game. the third result was surprising considering its title is 'space game design' which was surprising given that its title is 'Space Game Design'.

This will probably improve the more you use search. It learns your behavior and filters results based on your preferences. It also searches for content as well as titles.

Some users are excited about Sora, while others are looking forward to improvements in Advanced Voice and new inference models. However, they are happy with the new features that solve their problems, and that is what they did with their search.