Google integrates AI into search engine, giving it many new features ...
Google has now rolled out search results organised by artificial intelligence (AI) globally to all countries wherever AI Overviews are available. The search engine giant will be using its Gemini AI models for this. Google says this improves the user experience since “people have found AI-organized search results pages more helpful” during its testing.
AI Overviews Feature
AI Overviews is a feature for Google Search which uses generative AI to summarize search results into short paragraphs. This also allows users to ask questions and get information faster. However, it initially faced many hiccups by sometimes displaying incorrect or nonsensical responses. This time however, Google says AI Overviews is quite useful for open-ended queries. And it's also specifically designed to start off getting results for food recipes for the time being.
Organized Search Page Layout
The main feature is how Google will use AI to organize the search page's layout. “You’ll now see a full-page experience, with relevant results organized just for you," according to an official company blog post. "You can easily explore content and perspectives from across the web including articles, videos, forums and more — all in one place,” the post added.
Website Traffic and Attribution
The company also said it has been testing a new design for AI Overviews which adds prominent links to supporting webpages directly within the text of an AI Overview. This importantly increases traffic for the websites whose content has been used by the AI. This in a way, deals with the problems of attribution and ethics related to intellectual property, while also maintaining Google's position as the world's most popular search engine.
Competition with OpenAI
AI-based competitor OpenAI went about things in a different way. In August this year, OpenAI partnered up with news publications like The Atlantic and News Corp, as well as with publishing brands such as Condé Nast. The partnership included licensing agreements for ChatGPT to use their content. This came after the New York Times, along with eight other papers sued OpenAI for copyright infringement, alleging their content was used for training the AI model.
Other AI Features
Other AI features rolled out by Google include an upgraded Google Lens allowing for a more seamless shopping experience and integrating relevant ads into Overviews in the US.
