Despite the rise of artificial intelligence chatbots, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT helping users search for information, Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG)(NASDAQ:GOOGL) virtually infinite pool of search data continues to play a crucial role in these platforms, according to The Information.
OpenAI uses scraped Google search results to help fuel ChatGPT responses for current events such as news, sports scores and equity markets, according to the report, which cited people familiar with the issue. OpenAI utilizes a web-scraping firm known as SerpApi to harvest the data. Perplexity, another AI-powered search engine, is also a customer of SerpApi.
SerpApi also counts tech giants such as Nvidia (NVDA) and Meta Platforms (META) among its customers.
SerpApi, which stands for Search Engines Results Page API, allows developers to collect data from Google and other search engines. According to SerpAPI, its webscraping services are legal in the U.S. as long as they collect from engines providing publicly available data.
“We are committed to maintaining legal and ethical web scraping practices and providing our customers with peace of mind,” according to the SerpAPI website. “This is one reason that for all plans from the production plan and upwards we offer our Legal US Shield. Although web scraping is legal in the US, we provide this coverage in case there were ever any issues to arise.”
“We retrieve accurate, contextually relevant information from web pages and a variety of providers,” OpenAI said to The Information.
“I don’t use Google anymore,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in an interview last week with The Verge. “I legitimately cannot tell you the last time I did a Google search.”
Seeking Alpha reached out to OpenAI for comment.