Google is shaking up Search. The company announced big new AI-powered changes to the world’s dominant search engine at I/O, Google’s annual conference for developers, on Tuesday. With the new features, Google Search is positioning itself as more than just a way to find websites. Instead, the company wants people to use its search engine to get direct answers and help plan events and brainstorm ideas.
“[With] generative artificial intelligence, Search can do more than you ever imagined,” wrote Liz Reid, vice president and head of Google Search. blog post. “So you can ask what’s on your mind or what you need to do—from research to planning to brainstorming—and Google will take care of it.”
Google’s changes to Search, the main way the company makes money, are in response to the explosion of generative AI since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022. Since then, a number of AI-powered apps and services, including ChatGPT, Anthropic. , Perplexity and OpenAI’s GPT-4-powered Microsoft’s Bing challenged Google’s flagship service by directly answering questions instead of presenting people with a list of links. This is a gap that Google is racing to bridge with its new features in Search.
Starting today, Google will display full AI-generated answers to most search queries at the top of the results page in the US. Google presented for the first time The feature was a year ago at Google I/O 2023, but until now anyone who wanted to use the feature had to register as part of the company. Search for labs a platform that allows people to test upcoming features before general release. Google is now offering its vision of artificial intelligence to hundreds of millions of Americans, and says it expects it to be available to more than a billion people in more countries by the end of the year. Reid wrote that people who chose to test the feature through Search Labs have used it “billions of times” so far, and said any link included as part of the AI-generated answers received more clicks than the page would have traditionally seen. internet list, something publishers are worried about. “As we expand this experience, we will continue to focus on sending valuable traffic to publishers and creators,” Reid wrote.
In addition to AI Reviews, food and recipes, and then movies, music, books, hotels, shopping and more in English. Searching for certain queries related to will display a new search page where the results are organized using artificial intelligence. “[When] If you’re looking for ideas, Search will use AI generation to brainstorm with you and create an AI-organized results page that makes research easier,” Reid said in a blog post.
If you join Search Labs, you’ll be able to access even more features powered by generative AI in Google Search. You’ll be able to access the AI Overview to simplify the language or break down a complex topic in more detail. An example of a query asking Google to explain the relationship between lightning and lightning, for example.
Search Labs testers will also be able to ask Google really complex questions in one query to get answers on one page instead of doing multiple searches. An example from a Google blog post: “Find the best yoga or pilates studios in Boston and show details about their deals and walking time from Beacon Hill.” In response, Google shows the top-rated yoga and pilates studios near Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood and even maps them for easy navigation.
Google also wants to become a meal and vacation planner by allowing people who sign up for Search Labs to ask questions like “create a 3-day meal plan for a group that’s easy to prepare” and change individual results in an AI-generated plan. with something else (for example, replacing a meat-based meal in a vegetarian meal plan).
Finally, Google will allow anyone who is a member of Search Labs to use video as a search query instead of text or images. “Perhaps you bought a record player at a thrift store, but when you turn it on, it doesn’t work and the needle and metal piece slide out unexpectedly,” Reid wrote in a Google blog post. “Video search saves you the time and trouble of finding the right words to describe this problem, and you’ll get an AI overview with troubleshooting steps and resources.”
All of these new capabilities are powered by an all-new Gemini model customized for Search that combines Gemini’s advanced multi-step reasoning and multimodal capabilities with Google’s traditional search engines, Google said.
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