Six months ago, Google didn’t seem remotely concerned about its search activity. Then OpenAI’s ChatGPT was launched and Microsoft’s Bing spawned a chatbot.
At Google’s annual I/O conference today, the search giant announced it will imbue results with generative artificial intelligence technology, similar to the one behind ChatGPT. The company is launching an experimental version of its esteemed search engine that includes text generation like that of ChatGPT and other advanced chatbots.
Google’s revamped search still involves typing a query and still responds with links to websites, snippets of content, and ads. But in some situations, the top of the page will contain text synthesized by AI that pulls information from various sources on the internet and links to those web pages. A user can ask follow-up questions to get more specific information.
A question about the coronation of Britain’s new king can be answered with a few paragraphs summarizing the event. When asked about e-bikes, Google’s algorithms can display bullet points of product reviews published by various websites and link to online stores where a user can make a purchase. The revamped version of search will be accessible in the US through a new feature called Search Labs, but it won’t be activated by default or for all Google users.
Google’s AI-infused search is significantly tamer than ChatGPT, eschewing an anthropomorphic personality and avoiding topics that could be considered controversial, such as political and medical or financial advice. When asked if Joe Biden is a good president or for information about, for example, the abortion laws of various US states, Google’s generative AI product refused to answer.
“The technology is still in its infancy, has its challenges, and we’re bound to make mistakes,” said Liz Reid, Google’s vice president of search, who gave WIRED a preview of the new features ahead of I/O.
Video: Google
Google is moving quickly to add ChatGPT-like features to search, but whether users will find them useful remains to be seen. For example, product searches synthesized material from various reviews, but it wasn’t immediately clear how the brief summaries might improve the search experience.
The raw feel of these new features may reflect the fact that their launch is a defensive move. Google has invested huge sums and large resources in AI in recent years, with CEO Sundar Pichai often calling the company “AI first.” Yet Google was still on the wrong track with the arrival of ChatGPT, a surprisingly smart and chatty – but also fundamentally flawed – chatbot from OpenAI.
ChatGPT is powered by a machine learning model trained to predict the words likely to follow a sequence of text by processing massive amounts of text, including large numbers of web pages. Additional training, given by people assessing the quality of the bot’s answers, made ChatGPT more adept at answering questions and holding a conversation.
