SAN FRANCISCO: OpenAI on Monday said it is making ChatGPT-powered Internet search available to all users, escalating its threat to Google’s dominance.
The San Francisco-based tech firm had beefed up its ChatGPT generative AI chatbot with search engine capabilities in late October, but made the feature available only to paying subscribers.
The newly public feature enables users to receive “fast, timely answers” with links to relevant web sources — information that previously required using a traditional search engine, the company said.
The upgrade to ChatGPT enables the AI chatbot to provide real-time information from across the web.
“We’re bringing search to all logged-in free users of ChatGPT,” OpenAI chief product officer Kevin Weil said in a video posted at YouTube.
“That means it’ll be available globally on every platform where you use ChatGPT.”
Examples of the new interface demonstrated by OpenAI resembled search results provided by Google and Google Maps, though without the clutter of advertising.
They also appeared similarly to the interface of Perplexity, another AI-powered search engine that offers a more conversational version of Google by featuring the sources it referenced in the answer.
“We’re really just making the ChatGPT experience that you know better with up-to-date information from the web,” ChatGPT Search product lead Adam Fry said in the video.
“We’re rolling this out to hundreds of millions of users, starting today.”
Rather than launching a separate product, OpenAI has integrated search directly into ChatGPT.
Users can enable the search feature by default or activate it manually via a web search icon.
Since their launch, data on AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude have been limited by time cutoffs, so the answers they provided were not up-to-date.
In contrast, Google and Microsoft both combine AI-generated answers with web results.
The addition of online search to ChatGPT will raise more questions about the startup’s link to Microsoft, a major OpenAI investor, which is also trying to expand the reach of its Bing search engine against Google.
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has set his company on a path to become an Internet powerhouse.
He successfully catapulted the company to a staggering $157 billion valuation in a recent round of fundraising that included Microsoft, Tokyo-based conglomerate SoftBank and AI chipmaker Nvidia as investors.
Enticing new users with search engine capabilities will increase the company’s computing needs and costs, which are enormous.
ChatGPT search opens to all users in challenge to Google
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ChatGPT search opens to all users in challenge to Google
- OpenAI has integrated search directly into ChatGPT
Myanmar junta extends ceasefire again after quake
The junta initially declared a truce in the many-sided civil war after a huge quake in late March killed nearly 3,800 people and left tens of thousands homeless.
The truce has been extended before, although conflict monitors say fighting has continued, including regular air strikes.
A statement from the junta information team on Saturday said there would be an extension of the armistice — which expired May 31 — until June 30.
This would “facilitate rehabilitation and reconstruction activities in earthquake-affected areas,” it said in the statement.
It added that the state was “intensively engaging in reconstruction of damaged government offices and departments, public residences and transport facilities.”
The ceasefire would also allow the country to hold “a free and fair multi-party democracy general election,” according to the statement.
The country’s junta chief said earlier this year that a long-promised election will be held by January, the first in the war-torn nation since the military staged a coup in 2021.
In the statement, the military also warned it would still strike back against any offensives by the array of ethnic armed groups and anti-coup fighters.
The announcement comes after Malaysian foreign minister Mohamad Hasan used a regional meeting last week to call for the extension and expansion of a ceasefire “beyond the currently affected zones.”
Malaysia currently holds the rotating chairmanship of the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
The bloc has led so far fruitless diplomatic efforts to end Myanmar’s conflict since the junta deposed civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021.
Poland holds tight vote with EU role at stake
- An exit poll is expected as soon as ballots close and election officials predict that the final result will be known on Monday
- Presidents in Poland have the power to veto legislation and are also the commander-in-chief of the armed forces
WARSAW: Poles began voting on Sunday in a tight presidential election with major implications for the country’s role in Europe, and for abortion and LGBTQ rights.
Warsaw’s pro-EU mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, 53, an ally of the centrist government, faces off against nationalist historian Karol Nawrocki, 42, with opinion polls showing that the race was too tight to call.
Polls close at 9:00 p.m. (1900 GMT) in the EU and NATO country, which borders Ukraine and has been a key supporter of its neighbor in the war against Russia.
An exit poll is expected as soon as ballots close and election officials predict that the final result will be known on Monday.
A victory for Trzaskowski would be a major boost for the progressive agenda of the government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a former European Council president.
It could mean significant social changes such as the introduction of civil partnerships for same-sex couples and an easing of the near-total ban on abortion.
Presidents in Poland, a fast-growing economy of 38 million people, have the power to veto legislation and are also the commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
Victory for Nawrocki would embolden the populist Law and Justice (PiS) party, which ruled Poland between 2015 and 2023, and could lead to fresh parliamentary elections.
Many Nawrocki supporters want stricter curbs on immigration and advocate for conservative values and more sovereignty for the country within the European Union.
“We should not give in to European pressure,” 40-year-old Agnieszka Prokopiuk, a homemaker, said ahead of the vote.
“We need to make our own way... and not succumb to trends from the West,” she said in the city of Biala Podlaska in eastern Poland near the Belarus border.
Tomasz Czublun, a 48-year-old mechanic, said: “The European Union is important but the sovereignty of our country is much more important.”
Anna Materska-Sosnowska, a politics expert, called the election “a real clash of civilizations” because of the wide policy differences between the candidates.
Many Trzaskowski voters support greater integration within the EU and an acceleration of social reforms.
Malgorzata Wojciechowska, a tour guide and teacher in her fifties, said Polish women “unfortunately do not have the same rights as our European friends.”
“I hope that Rafal Trzaskowski will relaunch the debate on abortion so that we can finally live in a free country where we can have our own opinion,” she said.
The election is also being watched closely in Ukraine, which is seeking to bolster international diplomatic support in its negotiations with Russia as its resistance to Moscow’s invasion grinds on.
Nawrocki, an admirer of US President Donald Trump, opposes NATO membership for Kyiv and has called for curbs on benefits for the estimated one million Ukrainian refugees in Poland.
He used his last campaign hours on Friday to leave flowers at a monument to Poles killed by Ukrainian nationalists during World War II.
“It was a genocide against the Polish people,” he said.
The election’s final result is expected to hinge on whether Trzaskowski can mobilize enough supporters and whether far-right voters will cast their ballots for Nawrocki.
Far-right candidates secured more than 21 percent of the vote in the election’s first round, which Trzaskowski won by a razor-thin margin of 31 percent against 30 percent for Nawrocki.
3 patients are killed in a fire that broke out at a hospital in the German city of Hamburg
BERLIN: Three patients were killed and many people were injured, two of them critically, in a fire that broke out overnight at a hospital in the German city of Hamburg, authorities said Sunday.
Firefighters were alerted to the blaze at the hospital, the Marienkrankenhaus, shortly after midnight. It broke out in a room in the geriatric ward, on the ground floor of the building, and spread to the facade of the floor above. Smoke spread across the building’s four floors.
It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the fire.
The fire department said that three adult patients were killed and more than 50 people injured, the German news agency dpa reported. Of those, two were in life-threatening condition, 16 had serious injuries and 36 were slightly hurt.
A section of the hospital had to be evacuated. Injured patients were treated either at the hospital itself or in nearby clinics. The fire was extinguished within about 20 minutes.
Bangladesh top court restores largest Islamist party
- The Supreme Court overturns cancelation of Jamaat-e-Islami’s registration
- Allows it to be formally listed as a political party with the Election Commission
DHAKA: Bangladesh on Sunday restored the registration of the largest Islamist party, allowing it to take part in elections, more than a decade after it was removed under the now-overthrown government.
The Supreme Court overturned a cancelation of Jamaat-e-Islami’s registration, allowing it to be formally listed as a political party with the Election Commission.
“The Election Commission is directed to deal with the registration of that party in accordance with law,” commission lawyer Towhidul Islam said.
Jamaat-e-Islami party lawyer, Shishir Monir, said the Supreme Court’s decision would allow a “democratic, inclusive and multi-party system” in the Muslim-majority country of 170 million people.
“We hope that Bangladeshis, regardless of their ethnicity or religious identity, will vote for Jamaat, and that the parliament will be vibrant with constructive debates,” Monir told journalists.
After Sheikh Hasina was ousted as prime minister in August, the party appealed for a review of the 2013 high court order banning it.
Sunday’s decision comes after the Supreme Court on May 27 overturned a conviction against a key leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, A.T.M. Azharul Islam.
Islam had been sentenced to death in 2014 for rape, murder and genocide during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.
Jamaat-e-Islami supported Islamabad during the war, a role that still sparks anger among many Bangladeshis today.
They were rivals of Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of the Awami League, who would become Bangladesh’s founding figure.
Hasina banned Jamaat-e-Islami during her tenure and cracked down on its leaders.
In May, Bangladesh’s interim government banned the Awami League, pending the outcome of a trial over its crackdown on mass protests that prompted her ouster last year.
Top defense officials say Ukraine war has blurred lines, exposing global threats
- Lithuanian Defense Minister Dovilė Šakalienė stated at the Shangri-La Dialogue that if Ukraine were to fall, it would have a ripple effect in Asia
SINGAPORE: China and North Korea’s support for Russia in its war against Ukraine has exposed how lines between regions have blurred, and the need for a global approach toward defense, top security officials said Sunday.
North Korea has sent troops to fight on the front lines in Ukraine, while China has supported Russia economically and technologically while opposing international sanctions.
Lithuanian Defense Minister Dovilė Šakalienė told delegates at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s premiere defense forum, that if Ukraine were to fall, it would have a ripple effect in Asia and suggested it could embolden China in its territorial claims on Taiwan and virtually the entire South China Sea.
“If Russia prevails in Ukraine, it’s not about Europe. It’s not about one region,” she said. “It will send a very clear signal also to smaller states here in Indo-Pacific that anyone can ignore their borders, that any fabricated excuse can justify invasion.”
The comments echoed those from French President Emmanuel Macron as he opened the conference on Friday advocating for greater European engagement in the Indo-Pacific.
On Saturday, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested European countries should focus their defense efforts in their own region and leave the Indo-Pacific more to the US, but Šakalienė said the regions were clearly intertwined.
“It’s not a secret that when we talk about the main perpetrators in cybersecurity against Japan it’s China, Russia and North Korea,” she said.
“When we talk about main cybersecurity perpetrators against Lithuania it’s Russia, China and Belarus — two out of the three are absolutely the same.”
She added that “the convergence of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea into an increasingly coordinated authoritarian axis,” demands a unified response. Iran has been a key supplier of attack drones to Russia for its war effort.
“In this context, the United States’ strategic focus on Indo-Pacific is both justified and necessary, but this is not America’s responsibility alone,” she said.
Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles told reporters on the sidelines that his main takeaway from the three-day conference, hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, was the “real intent in the way in which European countries have engaged” in the debates.
“It reflects the sense of connection, interconnectedness ... between Indo-Pacific on the one hand and the North Atlantic on the other,” he said.
China sent a lower-level delegation from its National Defense University this year to the conference, but its Foreign Ministry on Sunday responded to comments from Hegseth that Beijing was destabilizing the region and preparing to possibly seize Taiwan by force.
“No country in the world deserves to be called a hegemonic power other than the US itself, who is also the primary factor undermining the peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific,” it said, while reiterating its stance that the Taiwan issue was an internal Chinese matter.
“The US must neve play with fire on this question,” the ministry said.
Philippines Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr, whose country has been involved in increasingly violent clashes with China over competing claims in the South China Sea, scoffed at the idea that the US was the problem.
“What the Chinese government considers fair and just may stand in stark contrast to the norms and values accepted by the rest of the world, especially the smaller countries,” he said.
“To envision a China-led international order, we only need to look at how they treat their much smaller neighbors in the South China Sea.”
He also underscored the international implications of the tensions in the Indo-Pacific, noting that the South China Sea was one of several maritime routes that are “arteries of the global economy.”
“Disruption in any of these maritime corridors triggers ripple effects across continents, impacting trade flows, military deployments, and diplomatic posture,” he said.
