👀 OpenAI continue...

OpenAI officially take on search

ChatGPT vs. Google, a tale as old as… well, like, a year ago?

Since the release of ChatGPT et al., many have announced the demise of the traditional search engine. Why would you ask Google, get served 10 blue links (most of which are ads), and painstakingly navigate back and forth instead of just asking the GPT?

While the reports of Google’s death have been greatly exaggerated (StatCounter announced a significant drop in Google searches in April 2024 only to retract their research citing an ‘anomaly’), OpenAI are taking a proper crack at it this time.

Introducing SearchGPT, a prototype of ‘new AI search features’ that provides clear answers and cites sources. Is this a new way to search? Unsure. Even OpenAI themselves call it a ‘temporary prototype’, whatever that means.

You can judge for yourself by joining the beta.

Hum it like it’s hot

For our millennial audience: yes, this is Shazam 2.0.

For everyone else, introducing Sound Search by TikTok. Hum, whistle, or play a song into your phone and TikTok will (hopefully) identify it for you.

This new feature is eerily similar to YouTube’s song detection tool announced ~2 weeks ago. Interesting timing but not entirely surprising as YouTube and TikTok have been going head-to-head recently:

TikTok usage amongst teens is more active than it may appear: 64% of Gen Z use TikTok for search. Meanwhile YouTube’s ad revenue growth dramatically slowed down last quarter from 21% in Q1 to 13% in Q2.

There’s a chance TikTok is stealing users away from YouTube. With Sound Search, they are hoping to offer yet another way to grow its maturing search user base.

The feature is currently in beta and only accessible in select regions.

Airtable expand to no-code app building

Two weeks ago, we reported Quora’s foray into prompt-to-app building. This time, Airtable make their move.

Airtable launched Cobuilder, ‘the fastest way to build no-code applications’.

The idea is simple enough: type the app you’d like to build using natural language and Cobuilder does the rest. Thanks to Airtable’s original product as an excellent backbone, the output is a usable app tied to a database and a beautiful interface.

According to Airtable, 'thousands of applications were built using Cobuilder during the beta phase.

Give Cobuilder a try.

What else is up?

• Beehiiv launched a ‘mobile app’ (in quotation marks as, well, it’s not really a mobile app). Newsletter creators can make a single-page application available for their readers to install.

• The CrowdStrike outage has reportedly cost businesses an estimated $5 billion. Ouch.

• Spotify released a countdown feature for artists about to release an album. Artists can build anticipation for their upcoming tracks and users can pre-save albums about to come out. According to Spotify, 70% of users who pre-save an album stream it within a week of its release.

Get backlog’d

Shots fired

Written by: Product nerds. What did you expect?

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