The future of search? AI desktop search tools coming to your desktop

This page has 0 threads | Add post

Blogs

Finding our blogs useful? Please consider helping us to share more!

The future of search? AI desktop search tools coming to your desktop
Google are right to worry about the safety of their current virtual monopoly on search, with breaking news on new desktop search versions of AI tools from ChatGPT and Claude.

Posted by Andy Brown on 05 November 2024

In this blog

ChatGPT
Claude

Wise Owl predict that in 5 years' time this image will evoke feelings of nostalgia:

Are the days of standard desktop search coming to an end?

Here's an update on the progress being made towards desktop search engines by two of the main players in the market.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT announced the launch of its desktop search facility a week ago, although it's currently only available to paying users:

A typical minimalistic screen from ChatGPT!

If you have a ChatGPT Plus account (and we think you probably should), you'll then have a chance to make any query a desktop search:

If you click on this button the GO arrow on the right changes colour to blue, showing that you will run this as a standard search term.

Disappointingly, Wise Owl are only number 2 for this search!

Huh!

You can get the ChatGPT browser extension and switch all of your searches to use ChatGPT:

The ChatGPT search extension.

This clearly then betrays who's paying for all of this development:

The 365 waffle at the top left is a giveaway that Microsoft are funding ChatGPT (as is the Copilot icon).

Here are the results I got from this simple search for the best restaurants in Marple. I'm impressed: instead of having to wade through lots of advertising and clickbait I've got the 3 top restaurants recommended by TripAdvisor and Google:

I've still to eat in The Crown, but everyone says how good it is!

I've installed this as my default search engine - let's see how long this lasts!

Claude

Anthropic (the company behind Claude) have released a desktop version for Macs or Windows:

Anthropic say that this is beta software.

Unfortunately on my desktop this won't install:

I can't remember the last time an installation failed in Windows.

There's beta software, and then there's beta software! Sadly I can't now review this, which is a shame, as I suspect it will be functionally as good as ChatGPT but have a much nicer user interface.

Perplexity have also released a desktop search engine, but since Perplexity was always intended as a search tool rather than an AI assistant, I don't think this merits inclusion in this blog.

Some other pages relevant to the above blog include: