Updated July 25, 2024 at 5:11 pm ET

OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman. Photo: jason redmond/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

OpenAI is launching a test version of its long-awaited search engine, which it says will cite sources of information including news from business partners such as The Wall Street Journal parent News Corp NWSA -0.59%decrease; red down pointing triangle and the Atlantic magazine.

The tool, called SearchGPT, will summarize the information found on websites, including news sites, and let users ask follow-up questions, just as they can currently with OpenAI’s popular chatbot, ChatGPT. The sources are linked at the end of each answer in parentheses.

OpenAI also built a sidebar where it said users can see more results and sources with relevant information.

SearchGPT is OpenAI’s most direct challenge yet to Google’s dominance in search since the release of ChatGPT in 2022 caught the tech company flat-footed. Google this year widely rolled out its own AI search feature that synthesizes information from multiple web sources. Shares in Google-parent Alphabet GOOGL -3.10%decrease; red down pointing triangle fell by nearly 3% Thursday.

Other AI companies are also entering the search battle, including Perplexity, which is backed by Jeff Bezos and founded by a former OpenAI employee.

SearchGPT is OpenAI’s most direct challenge yet to Google’s dominance in search since the release of ChatGPT. Photo: OpenAI

OpenAI said it partnered with publishers to build the search tool. In recent months, OpenAI representatives have shown mock-ups of the feature to publishers, who have grown increasingly uneasy about the way AI could reshape their newsrooms and newsgathering amid recent declines in online traffic for many publishers.

Publishers are broadly concerned that AI-powered search tools from OpenAI or Alphabet’s Google will serve up complete answers based on news content, eliminating the need to click on an article link and starving publishers of online traffic and advertising revenue.

It isn’t clear how much traffic a product such as SearchGPT could send publishers’ way. “We expect to learn more about user behavior” in the test, an OpenAI spokeswoman said.

Publishers are leery of tech partnerships after more than a decade of dealing with the whims of tech companies including Meta Platforms’ Facebook and Google, whose product changes could sometimes trigger violent changes in online traffic.

Their fears were further fanned when last month Perplexity repurposed a story by Forbes magazine for one of its products and didn’t mention the news source until the bottom of the page. Chief Executive Aravind Srinivas attributed the issue to the product’s “rough edges.”

Even so, many publishers see value in selling access to their intellectual property to AI companies who need massive amounts of data and content to refine their AI systems and create new products like SearchGPT.

Over the past year, OpenAI has struck partnerships with a litany of news publishers including Politico and Business Insider’s parent, Axel Springer; the Associated Press; Le Monde; the Financial Times; and IAC’s Dotdash Meredith, home of such publications as People and Better Homes & Gardens.

In some of those deals, OpenAI has extended millions of dollars in cash and cloud credits to publishers in exchange for the right to train new generative AI models on their work.

Other publishers, including the New York Times, have opted to battle OpenAI and its backer, Microsoft MSFT -2.45%decrease; red down pointing triangle, in court, alleging in lawsuits that their content was used without permission to train OpenAI’s systems. OpenAI has said the Times lawsuit is without merit.

Many of the discussions OpenAI had with publishers about the search tool were focused on how their news content will be used in answers to queries. Thursday, OpenAI said publishers can manage how their content appears in SearchGPT.

In a statement included as part of OpenAI’s press release Thursday, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson said CEO Sam Altman and other OpenAI leaders understood that any AI-powered search must rely on “the highest-quality, most reliable information furnished by trusted sources.”

For now, SearchGPT will be tested as a separate product, but eventually OpenAI plans to integrate it within its main ChatGPT service. News publishers and creators will be among those first few testers and OpenAI will offer a wait list where U.S. users can sign up to try the tool.

Wall Street Journal owner News Corp has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI.

Write to Deepa Seetharaman at deepa.seetharaman@wsj.com