Weekly Tech Wrap: OpenAI launches Google search rival, Apple Maps comes to web and more

livemint.com:

OpenAI finally unveiled a search engine competitor to Google called SearchGPT. The new feature is currently in the 'prototype' stage and is only available via a waiting list, but it is expected to be rolled out to all users in the future.In a blogpost about new search feature, OpenAI wrote, “We’re testing SearchGPT, a prototype of new search features designed to combine the strength of our AI models with information from the web to give you fast and timely answers with clear and relevant sources."SearchGPT start page is akin to Google and we get a message reading, “what are you looking for?" After entering the search query, though, you get a direct answer much like Perplexity or Google's disgraced AI overviews feature.Meta announced its latest open-source language model, Llama 3.1 405B, which is said to rival the likes of GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet in human evaluations and benchmakers.

The new model comes with a context window of 128k tokens and is said to offer new use case cases like synthetic data generation and model distillation.Tech giant Apple has unveiled the public beta of Apple Maps on the web, allowing global users to access the service directly from their browsers. The new web-based Apple Maps can be accessed through both Chrome and Safari browsers, bringing driving and walking directions, gas station information, and comprehensive place details directly to users' desktops.Reportedly, users can now get driving and walking directions, search for various places, and view detailed information such as photos, operating hours, ratings, and reviews, all from their browser.