By the end of the year, over a billion individuals will have access to AI Overviews, which are now available in the US.
Search is being disrupted by Google. The company unveiled significant new AI-powered updates to the most popular search engine globally on Tuesday at Google’s annual developer conference, I/O. Google is portraying Search as more than just a tool for finding webpages with the addition of these new features. The organization prefers that users use its search engine to find answers quickly and to assist with event planning and idea generation.
Liz Reid, vice president and head of Google Search, stated in a blog post that “Search can do more than you ever imagined [with]generative AI.” “Therefore, you can ask Google anything you’re thinking about or need done, like planning, brainstorming, or research, and Google will handle the grunt work.”
Since OpenAI’s ChatGPT was launched at the end of 2022, generative AI has grown rapidly. This has led to changes in Google’s key revenue stream, Search. Since then, a few AI-driven programs and services have taken aim at Google’s main service by offering direct answers to users’ queries rather than just a list of links. These include ChatGPT, Anthropic, Perplexity, and Microsoft’s Bing, which is powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4. Google is working quickly to close this gap with its new Search functionality.
For the majority of search queries, Google will now display comprehensive AI-generated responses at the top of the results page in the United States. The function was first introduced by Google a year ago at Google I/O in 2023, but up until now, users have had to sign up to use it as part of the company’s Search Labs platform, which allows users to test out forthcoming features before they are made generally available. Hundreds of millions of Americans may now get AI Overviews thanks to Google, which also reports that by the end of the year, over a billion people worldwide should be able to access it. According to Reid, those who chose to test the feature through Search Labs have used it “billions of times” so far. Publishers have expressed concern about the fact that links included in the AI-generated answers receive more clicks than if the page had simply appeared as a regular web listing. Reid stated, “We’ll continue to focus on sending valuable traffic to publishers and creators as we expand this experience.”
Apart from AI Overviews, specific queries related to food and cooking, as well as later searches for movies, music, books, hotels, shopping, and other content in the US English language, will bring up a new search page with AI-organized results. In the blog post, Reid stated that “[When] you’re looking for ideas, Search will use generate AI to brainstorm with you and create an AI-organized results page that makes it easy to explore.”
You can use generative AI to power even more features in Google Search if you sign up for Search Labs. To help you understand a complex issue better or to simplify terminology, you can obtain AI Overview. This is an example of a search query that asks Google to clarify, for example, how lightning and thunder are related.
Additionally, rather than needing to conduct numerous searches, Search Labs testers will be able to ask Google extremely complicated questions in a single query and receive responses on a single page. “Find the best yoga or pilates studios in Boston and show details on their intro offers and walking time from Beacon Hill,” is one example provided in the Google blog article. Google responds by displaying the best-rated pilates and yoga studios close to Boston’s Beacon Hill district, along with a map for simple navigating.
By allowing users to ask questions like “create a 3 day meal plan for a group that’s easy to prepare” and allowing you to replace specific results in its AI-generated plan with another, Google is also attempting to become a meal and vacation planner. For example, you could replace a meat-based dish in a meal plan with a vegetarian one.
Lastly, users who register for Google Search Labs will soon be able to substitute a video query for word or image queries. Reid posted on Google’s blog, “Maybe you bought a record player at a thrift shop, but it’s not working when you turn it on and the metal piece with the needle is drifting unexpectedly.” “You can get an AI Overview with steps and resources to troubleshoot by searching with video, which saves you the time and trouble of finding the right words to describe this issue.”
According to Google, all of these new features are made possible by a completely redesigned Gemini model just for Search, which blends Google’s conventional search algorithms with Gemini’s sophisticated multi-step reasoning and multimodal capabilities.