Google Unleashes AI in Search

At the Google IO 2024 developer event, Google announced the rollout of AI-powered overviews for US users, aiming to address concerns about losing market share to competitors like ChatGPT and Perplexity.

This enhancement will be extended to "hundreds of millions of users" this week, with plans to reach over a billion users by the year's end.

Liz Reid, Google's Head of Search, revealed that the company has developed a custom Gemini model for search.

This model combines real-time information, Google’s ranking algorithms, long-context analysis, and multimodal features to enhance search capabilities.

Google's AI-powered overviews, part of its Search Generative Experience (SGE) tested since last year, are now being widely deployed.

“We’ve heard that users find search more helpful than ever. At this point, we’ve served billions of queries. And what we hear again and again is that people like this combination of insights, mixed with the ability to dive deeper to hear from human perspectives and different authoritative sources,” Reid said about combining AI and traditional website results.

Despite criticisms regarding the impact of AI on web traffic, businesses, and journalism, Google has noted that its AI overview feature has led to users clicking on a wider variety of websites during its testing phase.

Reid clarified that AI overviews will not appear for straightforward queries where traditional search results are sufficient, but will be invaluable for more complex queries with scattered information.

Additionally, Google also wants to use Gemini as an agent to complete tasks like meal or trip planning. You would be able to type queries like “Plan a meal for a family of four for three days” and get links and recipes for these three days.