May 13 (Reuters) -

ChatGPT-maker OpenAI plans to announce on Monday updates to

its flagship chatbot as its most advanced AI model GPT-4, which

"feels like magic," CEO Sam Altman said on X on Friday.

The company said on X that it will hold a livestream

conference on Monday at 10am PT (1700 GMT) to "demo some updates

to ChatGPT and GPT-4."

Reuters last week reported that the Microsoft ( MSFT )

-backed startup was planning an announcement Monday of

an AI-powered search product one day ahead of Google's

I/O developers conference, citing sources.

But the company decided to delay the search product

announcement, according to one source familiar with the matter.

On Friday, CEO Sam Altman posted on X that the announcement

would be "not gpt-5, not a search engine, but we've been hard at

work on some new stuff we think people will love! feels like

magic to me."

OpenAI is under pressure to expand the user base of ChatGPT,

its flagship chatbot product that wowed the world with its

ability to produce humanlike written content and top-notch

software code.

Shortly after launching in late 2022, ChatGPT was called

the fastest application to ever reach 100 million monthly active

users. However, worldwide traffic to ChatGPT's website has been

on a roller-coaster ride in the past year and is only now

returning to its May 2023 peak, according to analytics

firm Similarweb.

Giving ChatGPT the search engine-like capability of

accessing real-time, accurate web information is an obvious next

step, and one that the current iteration of ChatGPT struggles

with, industry experts have said.

That would also put OpenAI in direct competition with

Google, which has announced generative AI features for its own

namesake search engine, and well-funded startup Perplexity,

which has gained traction through providing an AI-native search

interface that shows citations in results and images as well as

text in its responses.

Weaving in real-time information has not been an easy

task. An earlier attempt to bring updated and real-world

information in to ChatGPT, called ChatGPT plugins, was retired

in April, according to a help center posting on OpenAI's

website.