Google's AI-powered search experience starts rolling out to consumers

Google Search faces its biggest challenge in over a decade amid renewed competition from rivals such as Microsoft and OpenAI and upstarts such as Perplexity.

Google is introducing an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered search experience to consumers, after a nearly year-long experiment, along with several feature enhancements to handle tougher, complex queries.

This move comes as the tech giant seeks to reimagine its flagship search product in the generative AI era.

The search experience, called AI Overviews, will be rolled out to all consumers in the United States this week with plans to bring it to more countries soon, the company said at its annual developer conference Google I/O 2024 on May 14.

With this rollout, Google said "hundreds of millions" of users will have access to AI Overviews, and the company expects to make it available to over a billion people by the end of the year.

"We've been working on AI for well over a decade and yet we know we are still in the very early days of this incredible platform shift" said Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google parent firm Alphabet.

The move comes as Google Search faces its biggest challenge in over a decade amid renewed competition from rivals such as Microsoft and OpenAI and upstarts such as Perplexity.

The way people engage with information is also changing and is becoming more conversational, as evident by the widespread adoption of AI chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, Microsoft's Copilot, and Anthropic's Claude, besides Google's own Gemini.

How does AI Overviews work?

AI Overviews, as the name suggests, provides a quick AI-generated summary of a topic along with links to go deeper, at the top of the search results. Users can also tap on 'show more' option to ask a follow-up question or choose one of the suggested questions to enter a conversational window.

A screenshot of AI Overviews feature on mobile (Image Source: Google)

The feature will be powered by a custom Gemini model that's built specifically for Google Search.

The AI model brings together Gemini’s advanced capabilities — including multi-step reasoning, planning and multimodality — with the company's real-time information, knowledge graph, and ranking and quality systems, said Liz Reid, the head of Google Search.

People will also soon be able to adjust their AI Overview with options to simplify the language or break it down in more detail, which can be useful if they are new to a topic.

Pichai said Google has already answered billions of queries as part of Search Generative Experience (SGE), including longer and more complex queries. Search Generative Experience is the company's generative AI-powered search experience that was made available as an opt-in experiment through its Search Labs initiative in a few markets including India last year.

"We are encouraged to see not only an increase in search usage, but also an increase in user satisfaction," Pichai said.

That said, this experiment has caused concern among web publishers over a potential loss in traffic and, consequently, a decline in revenue.

Gartner, a research and consulting firm, predicts traffic to the web from search engines will fall 25 percent by 2026.

Reid however claimed that people using AI overviews have been visiting a greater diversity of websites for help with more complex questions than they have in the past. Additionally, links included in AI overviews receive more clicks than those that appear as traditional web listings for the same query, she said.

Search ads will continue to appear in dedicated slots throughout the page, with clear labeling to distinguish between organic and sponsored results.

Last month, Alphabet chief business officer Philipp Schindler said that the search giant is experimenting with new ad formats including search and shopping ads alongside search results in SGE.

Read: Ads, cloud, subscriptions: How Google parent plans to monetise its AI offerings

Meal & trip planning on Google Search

Google Search is making use of Gemini's multi-step reasoning capabilities to answer increasingly complex questions that previously would have had to be broken into multiple questions.

Google is using Gemini AI model's reasoning capabilities to help people create plans directly in Search, starting with meals and vacations (Image Source: Google)

For example, people can soon ask for the best yoga studios in Bengaluru that have discounts for new members and is conveniently located for your commute in a single query. This capability will soon be available for English queries in the United States through Search Labs, which houses all the company's early-stage experiments in Google Search.

The tech giant is also using the AI model's reasoning capabilities to help people create plans directly in Search, starting with meals and vacations.

For instance, one can search for something like “create a 3 day meal plan for a group that’s easy to prepare”, following which the search engine will surface a wide range of recipes from across the web, which can serve as an initial starting point. People can also easily adjust these plans based on their preferences and export them to Gmail or Docs.

These capabilities are currently available for English language users in the United States through Search Labs. The feature will support more categories such as parties, date night and workouts along with providing additional customisation capabilities later this year, the company said.

Google Photos is also introducing a new 'Ask Photos' feature, powered by Gemini's multimodal capabilities, that will enable people to ask queries about photos in their library.

"For example, if you search for your license plate. In the past, you would find pictures of cars and you would have to scroll and find the license plate. We can automatically answer it now for you" Pichai said.

"You can also ask more complex questions. For example, maybe your daughter is a swimmer and you want to see how her swimming has progressed over time. You can ask that question and automatically, Gemini will organize and show that progression" he said. The feature will be rolling out later this year.

AI-organised pages

Google Search is also leveraging generative AI to create an AI-organised results page that makes it easy for consumers to explore new ideas and topics, where they have no idea what questions to ask to get started.

This page will offer results featuring a wide range of perspectives and content types. Results will be categorised under unique, AI-generated headlines, the company said.

AI-organised results page makes it easy for consumers to explore new ideas and topics (Image Source: Google)

For instance, if a person is visiting the Netherlands and trying to figure out where to go and what are the special attractions among others. Google Search will create an AI-organised search results page to provide this information across multiple categories such as shopping, restaurants, and music among others.

The feature will soon be available for English searches in the United States, starting with dining and recipes, followed by movies, music, books, hotels, and shopping among others.

Search with Video

Google Search will also introduce the ability for users to ask questions with video, by leveraging Gemini's long context window and advancements in video understanding.

One can choose a video, ask a question by voice and Google Search will pull together all necessary information to debug it through an AI overview, Reid said.

Google Search will allo users to ask questions with video, by leveraging Gemini's long context window and advancements in video understanding (Image Source: Google)

For instance, if a person has bought a record player from a second-hand store but it's not working, they can shoot a video and ask how to fix it. Following this, Google Search will provide an AI Overview with steps and resources to troubleshoot it.

This feature will be soon available for Search Labs users in English in the United States, with plans to expand to more regions over time.

"This is just a glimpse of how we’re reimagining Google Search — combining the very best of Search today with Gemini’s advanced capabilities. Soon, Google will do the searching, simplifying, researching, planning, brainstorming and so much more" Reid said.

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