Dear Commons Community,
Google is taking its next big step in artificial intelligence by adding interactive capabilities to its search engine. As reported by The New York Times.
Google became the gateway to the internet by perfecting its search engine. For two decades, it surfaced 10 blue links that gave people access to the information they were looking for.
But after a quarter century, the tech giant is betting that the future of search will be artificial intelligence. Yesterday, Google said it was introducing a new feature in its search engine called A.I. Mode. The tool will function like a chatbot, allowing people to start a query, ask follow-up questions and use the company’s A.I. system to deliver comprehensive answers.
“It’s a total reimagining of search,” said Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google, in a press briefing ahead of the company’s annual conference for software developers. In tests of the feature, he said, people dramatically “changed the nature of how they are interacting with search.”
The feature headlined a list of new A.I. abilities, including more personalized and automated email replies and a shopping tool to automatically purchase clothing after it’s put on sale.
With the introduction of A.I. Mode, Google is essentially trying to disrupt its traditional search business before upstart A.I. competitors can disrupt it. The search giant has been nervous about that possibility since declaring a “code red” two years ago after the arrival of ChatGPT, a chatbot from OpenAI that ignited a race to add generative A.I. into tech products.
But Google has been hesitant to fully embrace A.I. because it has so much to lose. The company’s search business generated nearly $200 billion last year, more than half of its total sales. And the bedrock of that business has been how it has reliably provided people with the best answers to questions.
Though they are a technical leap, A.I. systems have one big shortcoming: They are prone to giving incorrect answers, like recommending people eat rocks, which one of Google’s A.I. systems did last year.
A.I. might have already begun to cut into Google’s popularity as the default for finding digital information. During testimony in a Justice Department antitrust case against Google this month, one of Apple’s top executives, Eddy Cue, said Google search traffic had declined for the first time in 22 years because more people were using artificial intelligence. Google said afterward that it continued to “see overall query growth” in search.
“They hesitated on this for a long time because they didn’t think the quality was good or know how to monetize it,” said Pete Meyers, the principal innovation architect at Moz, a software company focused on search engine optimization that tracks changes to Google Search. “Now they’re doing what they think they have to do to compete, and it’s uncomfortable.”
A.I. Mode, which launched in the United States on Tuesday, won’t serve ads initially. Google is holding an event for marketers and advertisers on Wednesday where it could unveil more.
The A.I. transition comes amid mounting antitrust pressures to break up Google’s business. Over the past two years, Google has lost a string of antitrust cases after being found to have a monopoly over its app store, search engine and advertising technology. The U.S. government argued this month that the company should have to give competing search engines and A.I. companies access to its data on what users search for and click on.
Google’s new A.I. features are also bound to deepen tensions between Google and web publishers who are concerned about traffic. Chatbots often lift information from websites and deliver it directly to people, upending the traditional search model that has sent people across the web to find material.
The company has sought to downplay publishers’ concerns that A.I. will disrupt their businesses. Mr. Pichai said A.I. Overviews, a feature the company introduced last year to generate summaries above traditional search results, has increased the number of searches people do and often leads people to spend more time on suggested websites.
It was only a matter of time before Google would go all into A.I.
Tony
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