OpenAI's ChatGPT Relies on Patchwork of Crawlers and Third-Party APIs, Including SerpApi — Which Google Is Suing
A new analysis by Olivier de Segonzac maps the layered data pipeline behind ChatGPT's real-time web answers, revealing OpenAI's proprietary Labrador bots, Bing's image index, and SerpApi — the latter currently the target of a Google lawsuit over unauthorized scraping. A federal judge in September 2026 rejected SerpApi's bid to compel Google to disclose licensing agreements.