The feature would be available in other countries soon, he added.
Mountain view:
Google said Tuesday it would introduce AI-generated answers to users’ online searches in the United States, in one of the biggest updates to its search engine in 25 years.
“I’m excited to announce that we’re launching this all-new experience, ‘AI Summaries,’ to everyone in the US this week,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said at an event in California.
The feature would be available in other countries soon, he added.
With the change, many of Google’s search results will include an AI “overview” at the top of the page, before the more typical unfolding of links and features.
The search engine’s AI answers, generated by Google’s Gemini AI technology, provide a few paragraphs of explanation with links to the online sources that provided the information.
“You can ask for anything you want to do or anything you want to do – from researching to planning to brainstorming – and Google will take care of the legwork,” says Liz Reid, team principal at Google Search.
The change appears to be a response to growing pressure from AI-powered search engines like Perplexity and repeated rumors that OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is building its own AI search tool.
Creators and small publishers are nervous about the change, fearing that users will no longer click through to websites to find information.
Research firm Gartner predicts that traffic to the web via search engines will decline by 25 percent by 2026 due to the introduction of AI bots and similar features.
Google pushed back on suggestions that ChatGPT-style chatbots could have an impact on its business.
“We found that people with AI Overviews use search more often and are more satisfied with their results,” said Reid.
“Rather than splitting your question into multiple searches, you can ask your most complex questions, with all the nuances and caveats you have in mind, all at once.”
– ‘Intuitive and helpful’ –
Google’s announcement was part of an AI-focused keynote presentation opening Google’s annual I/O developer conference in Mountain View, California.
The company will also soon begin testing the application of AI to searches using video content as a search source, Reid said.
Such multimodal searches 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 speech, text or images.
OpenAI’s update to its technology turned out to be extremely conversational: it could crack jokes, write songs, and tutor a student in algebra.
Google, like OpenAI, also showed demos of staff members asking the AI to recognize the environment through a smartphone’s video camera and other assistant-like skills.
This ability is designed to be “conversational, intuitive and helpful,” according to Gemini Experiences and Google Assistant general manager Sissie Hsiao.
“You can collaborate with the most intelligent and personalized Gemini yet.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
