Yahoo launches Scout, a new AI-powered Q&A tool to compete with ChatGPT.
In recent years, AI has become the biggest trend in the technology industry, with almost every major player integrating artificial intelligence into their products and services. Amidst the fierce competition from ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot, a familiar name has unexpectedly returned to the race. Yahoo recently officially announced Yahoo Scout, a brand-new AI-powered Q&A tool.
Yahoo Scout is positioned at the intersection of traditional search engines and modern AI chat interfaces. When users enter a query, Scout returns answers in a visual way, combining structured content such as lists, tables, illustrations, and clear source links. These responses are generated from open web data, while also leveraging Yahoo's existing data and content repository.
Alongside this, Yahoo also introduced the Yahoo Scout Intelligence Platform – a platform that will serve as the backbone for AI experiences across a range of familiar services such as Yahoo Mail, News, Finance, Sports, and many others. In the shopping sector, Scout can help users conduct research that would otherwise take hours by summarizing product reviews and features to support purchasing decisions. With Yahoo Finance, Scout provides quick access to real-time financial information, including corporate news, analyst reviews, financial data, and earnings reports.
A new feature called 'More from Yahoo Scout' on Yahoo Finance transforms daily market news into an interactive research experience. Users can delve deeper into information through AI-guided questions, exploring key points, the context of stock price movements, and broader market impacts. Meanwhile, Yahoo News has begun rolling out AI-powered commentary summaries for select articles on its homepage.
Notably, Yahoo did not develop its own large-scale language model for Scout. Instead, it partnered with Anthropic and used Claude as the primary platform model. To update the latest web content, Yahoo Scout also leveraged Microsoft Bing's grounding API.
Currently, Yahoo Scout is being rolled out in beta at Scout.Yahoo.com as well as in the Yahoo Search app on iOS and Android, initially for users in the US.
