Google's answer to ChatGPT is a major overhaul of Google Search that infuses AI chatbot technology with the traditional search engine experience.
The company provided a sneak peek of this "Search Generative Experience" at Google I/O today, and the experimental search mode places an AI-generated answer at the top of the screen, forcing the user to scroll down to see the usual "blue link" search results.
As you can see, the new interface could put an end to old-school online search, much like Microsoft’s ChatGPT-powered Bing is already starting to do. Google says the approach will give users the best of the web by essentially combing through the internet, analyzing the applicable info, and summing it up in easy-to-read snippets.
The technology is smart enough to break down AI-generated results into categories. Users can also ask follow-up questions, which will cause Google search to expand into an AI-powered conversation mode.
On the downside, the new search engine could decimate web traffic for third-party sites, such as news publishers, blogs, and product reviewers. Indeed, the company’s own demo at Google I/O showed a user staying on the Google results page during most of the search process, although links to third-party sites were sprinkled in here and there.
The new search experience promises to help the company better compete against ChatGPT and Bing. But the big question is whether the same overhaul threatens Google’s ad business and the overall web ecosystem. The other problem is the risk of the AI-generated result producing inaccurate or misleading answers. It’s perhaps why the company is still testing the technology before embarking on a full rollout.
In a blog post, the company noted that it still plans on serving ads through dedicated slots on the experimental search mode. Google added: “We’ve trained these models to uphold Search’s high bar for quality, and we will continue to make improvements over time. They rely on our hallmark systems that we’ve fine-tuned for decades, and we’ve also applied additional guardrails, like limiting the types of queries where these capabilities will appear.”
The company has opened access to the new search experience for users in the US through a waitlist. Other markets will get access in the coming weeks.