(Credit: Michael Kan/PCMag)
Google’s Gemini can already produce an essay or article for you in seconds. But in the coming months, the chatbot will be able to take things further and publish in-depth research reports.
“What used to take you hours now takes minutes,” Google SVP Rick Osterloh said at today's Pixel 9 event. The company is calling the feature “Research with Gemini,” and it’s designed to answer more complex questions when a regular Gemini response won’t do.
(Credit: Michael Kan/PCMag)“Soon, Gemini will be able to assist you as your researcher, saving you tons of time by using information from across the web to create a research report that’s tailored to your exact questions,” Osterloh added.
The questions might include finding out the right scholarship programs to pursue or how to open a cafe in a city. Although the normal Gemini chatbot can provide a answer, sometimes the responses are too general. Research with Gemini, on the other hand, promises to produce lengthy, comprehensives reports that can spell out all the details you would like to know.
(Credit: Michael Kan/PCMag)The resulting feature essentially sounds like a beefed-up version of the normal Gemini. For example, when the chatbot enters research mode, it’ll spend several minutes, not just seconds, crawling the web—including subpages and drop-down menus—and analyzing relevant content.
“It then synthesizes all that information into a well-organized research report into a Google Doc,” Osterloh said. Importantly, the finished report will also cite sources through clickable links. In a demo after Tuesday's event, the company showed that research function can analyze 30 websites to help create a step-by-step guide on opening a sidewalk cafe in Seattle.
(Credit: Michael Kan/PCMag)The company is hyping up Research with Gemini when Google's chatbot is competing against OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It’s certainly not hard to imagine the feature making it easier for students to complete their research assignments. Research with Gemini might also become a useful way to pick financial stocks or even shop for a laptop—making it potential threat to third-party sites.
But a key challenge facing the technology is whether it can produce research reports with accurate information, or if Gemini will hallucinate the wrong facts.
As a safeguard, Research with Gemini is designed to cite sources, so users can verify a report's accuracy, Google tells told PCMag. The same sourcing can also help redirect user traffic to third-party sites to prevent publishers from losing exposure. In addition, Google is "red-teaming" the chatbot to ensure it won't produce reports about sensitive topics or illegal activities.
(Credit: Michael Kan/PCMag)For now, Research with Gemini will be limited to paid subscribers of Gemini Advanced, which costs $19.99 per month.