Source: AFP
Google announced on Tuesday that it will introduce artificial intelligence-generated answers to online queries made by users in the United States, in one of the biggest updates to its search engine in 25 years.
“I’m excited to announce that we’ll begin rolling out this completely revamped experience, AI Overview, to everyone in the US this week,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said at an event in California.
The feature will soon be available in other countries, he added.
With the change, many of Google’s search results will feature an AI “preview” at the top of the page before the more standard deployment of links and features.
The search engine’s AI answers, generated by Google’s Gemini AI technology, offer a paragraph or two of explanation with links to the online sources that provided the information.
“You can ask whatever’s on your mind or whatever else you want to do – from research to planning to brainstorming – and Google will take care of the legwork,” said Google Search team lead Liz Reid.
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The change appears to be a response to growing pressure from AI search engines like Perplexity and recurring rumors that OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, is building its own AI search tool.
Creators and small publishers are worried about the change, fearing that users will no longer click through to websites to find information.
Research firm Gartner predicts that web traffic from search engines will decline by 25 percent by 2026 due to AI bots and such features.
Google has pushed back at the suggestion that ChatGPT-style chatbots could affect its business.
“We’ve found that with AI Reviews, people use Search more and are more satisfied with their results,” Reid said.
“Instead of splitting your query into multiple searches, you can ask your most complex queries, with all the nuances and caveats in mind, all in one go.”
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“Intuitive and useful”
Google’s announcement was part of an AI-focused keynote that opened Google’s annual I/O developer conference in Mountain View, California.
The company will also soon begin testing the application of artificial intelligence to searches based on video content as a query source, according to Reid.
Such cross-media queries were among the highlights of OpenAI’s Monday release of GPT-4o, an update to OpenAI’s flagship model that could generate content or understand commands in voice, text or images.
OpenAI’s update to its technology proved highly conversational — capable of cracking jokes, writing songs, and helping teach a student algebra.
Google, like OpenAI, also showed demonstrations of staff members asking its AI to recognize its surroundings through a smartphone’s video camera and other assistant-like skills.
This ability is designed to be “conversational, intuitive and useful,” according to Gemini Experiences and Google Assistant general manager Sissie Hsiao.
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“You get to work with the most intelligent and individualized Gemini to date.”
Source: AFP