Washington, United States:
Online search, dominated by Google for 25 years, has become as banal as calling, but thanks to artificial intelligence it could finally get a thorough reset.
The classic search and click made ubiquitous by the Google giant is getting a major AI makeover as bots ChatGPT, Bard or Bing see hundreds of millions of web surfers search for answers to life’s questions in a new way.
“People are realizing how often they use Google, not to find a web page, but to answer a question,” said Stefan Sigg, Chief Product Officer at Germany-based Software AG.
Microsoft, long considered the bland uncle of big tech, has fearlessly and some say blindly jumped into generative AI searches with an update to Bing, the long-struggling also to Google.
Bing’s bot, which was released globally after three months of testing, responds instantly to a query rather than throwing out a page full of links for the searcher to browse and click through.
For example, with a prompt, Bing compares two products, brainstorms vacation plans, or reassuringly helps prepare for a job interview.
“heavy lifting”
“Now search does the heavy lifting for you,” said Cathy Edwards, VP of Engineering at Google, at the company’s annual I/O developer conference in California.
The user no longer has to “search through the information and then put things together,” she said.
At the conference, which corresponds to Bing, Google presented the latest iteration of its web search engine, but instead of the constellation of links you’re faced with today, a chatbot offered a few paragraphs to answer what you were looking for.
Google’s AI search engine will be slowly released in the United States to begin with, the company said.
“What we’re trying to do is make it more natural and intuitive, as easy as asking a friend and getting information from someone who’s really knowledgeable about any question you have in the world,” Elizabeth Reid, Vice President, told me. President of Search, to AFP.
Beyond search, Google and Microsoft have deployed generative AI tools to other products from cloud to word processing, presenting bots as helpful “co-pilots,” to use the term hammered home by the Windows maker.
Personal ‘spirit’
“I think search will be broken up into a million pieces and integrated into all sorts of interfaces, not just one monolithic centralized place like Google has become,” said John Battelle, author and media entrepreneur.
But if every website behaves like a loyal friend, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish good information from bad, he warned.
“Would you trust an AI travel agent to get you the right deal? No,” Battelle said.
“I want my own ‘mind’, my ‘agent’ to negotiate with the website. If I’m alone against an AI, I lose. I want one on my side.”
Battelle’s “ghost” would process a user’s information from the smartphone, computer, TV, or car to help the user respond and act online.
The bot, powered by personal data, would buy the best vacuum cleaner based on your tastes, habits and current promotions, saving a long and tedious search
The AI personal assistant should come for a fee, to ensure that personal data was not collected and sold to the highest bidder for advertising or online tracking, such as on social media.
Startups like Replika, Anima, and others are already entering the associated AI space.
‘vital role’
Google isn’t going away any time soon, says Jim Lecinski, a professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management.
“We could have had the same conversation about four years ago with the advent of voice assistants like Alexa or Siri,”
“Oh wow, searching is going away because people are just going to voice their question in their car and device on their counter. Well, here we are,” he said.
However, the disruption of generative AI could challenge the internet’s business model, as it could allow users to find the product they want “without having to click an ad,” Lecinski said.
But he has no doubt that the giants, including ad-based Google and Meta, will find solutions.
In the new version of Google Search released on Wednesday, the ads still appear, either at the top of the page or lower in the results, depending on the question asked.
“I don’t think we can predict what the future will bring, but we do think advertising will continue to play a critical role,” said Google’s Reid.
(This story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)