ChatGPT makes previously paid feature available to everyone - no login required

Amidst the rising competition from DeepSeek, OpenAI has been rushing to fortify its market share by making more features available to free users. In a recent development, OpenAI has announced it will be making AI-powered search available to everyone, regardless of whether they have an account. OpenAI posted the announcement to X on Wednesday. The feature was first released to paid users in October 2024, and made available for users with accounts in December.

The move follows a string of feature releases previously only available on paid plans. OpenAI's latest reasoning model, o3-mini, was made available for free on the 31st of January. Prior to that, OpenAI's o1-mini was also made openly available without a fee.

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(Credit: OpenAI)

Since DeepSeek's r1 model burst onto the scene in late January, AI firms have significantly accelerated the pace of their feature rollouts. On Wednesday, Google released its Gemini 2.0 series of models, which included the freemium Gemini 2.0 Flash. Similarly, OpenAI quickly pushed out their AI agent tools 'Operator' and 'Deep Research' in rapid succession.

With competition continuing to rise, the benefits of the latest AI advancements are fortunately passed onto the consumer. DeepSeek's r1 breakthrough in the development of low-cost AI models significantly altered the business model associated with AI tools, and the gap between small and large firms is only continuing to shrink. You can expect to see more free tools become available in the coming months.

To put ChatGPT's AI-powered search engine to the test - head straight to their website and click the 'search' toggle.

• Read more: Google releases Gemini 2.0 models: 'We kicked off the agentic era'
• Read more: OpenAI's second AI agent has been officially released
• Read more: AI Agents like OpenAI's 'Operator' have a long way to go before replacing humans