Mountain View:

Google on Tuesday said it would introduce AI-generated answers to online queries made by users in the United States, in one of the biggest updates to its search engine in 25 years.

“I’m excited to announce that we will begin launching this fully revamped experience, ‘AI overviews,’ to everyone in the US this week,” Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said at an event in California.

The feature would soon be available in other countries, he added.

With the change, many of Google’s search results will feature an AI “overview” at the top of the page before the more typical unfurling of links and features.

The search engine’s AI answers, generated by Google’s Gemini AI technology, offer a paragraph or two of explanation with links to the online sources that supplied the information.

“You can ask whatever’s on your mind or whatever you need to get done – from researching to planning to brainstorming – and Google will take care of the legwork,” said Google Search team boss Liz Reid.

The change seems to be an answer to growing pressure from AI-powered search engines like Perplexity and the repeated rumors that OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, is building its own AI search tool.

Creators and small publishers are nervous about the change, fearing users will no longer click through to websites to find information.

Research firm Gartner predicts traffic to the web from search engines will fall 25 percent by 2026 because of the introduction AI bots and such features features.

Google pushed back at the suggestion that ChatGPT-style chatbots could impact its business.

“We’ve found that with AI Overviews, people use Search more, and are more satisfied with their results,” Reid said.

“Rather than breaking your question into multiple searches, you can ask your most complex questions, with all the nuances and caveats you have in mind, all in one go.”

– ‘Intuitive and helpful’  –

Google’s announcement was part of an AI-focused keynote presentation opening Google’s annual I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California.

The company will also soon start testing applying AI to searches based on video content as the query source, according to Reid.

Such multi-modal queries were among the highlights of OpenAI’s release on Monday of GPT-4o, an update to OpenAI’s flagship model that could generate content or understand commands in voice, text, or images.

OpenAI’s update to its technology proved to be extremely conversational — able to crack jokes, write songs and help tutor a student in algebra.

Google, like OpenAI, also showed demos of staff members asking its AI to recognize its surroundings through the video camera on a smartphone and other assistant-like skills.

This ability is designed to be “conversational, intuitive and helpful,” according to Gemini Experiences and Google Assistant general manager Sissie Hsiao.

“You can collaborate with the most intelligent and personalized Gemini yet.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Gemini is intended to compete with OpenAI’s GPT-4 model. (File)
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Alphabet’s Google has given a small group of companies access to an early version of Gemini, its conversational artificial intelligence software, The Information reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Gemini is intended to compete with OpenAI’s GPT-4 model, according to the report.

For Google, the stakes of Gemini’s launch are high. Google has intensified investments in generative AI this year as it plays catch-up after Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT last year took the tech world by storm.

Gemini is a collection of large-language models that power everything from chatbots to features that either summarise text or generate original text based on what users want to read like email drafts, music lyrics, or news stories, the report said.

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It is also expected to help software engineers write code and generate original images based on what users ask to see.

Google is currently giving developers access to a relatively large version of Gemini, but not the largest version it is developing which would be more on par with GPT-4, the report said.

The search and advertising giant plans to make Gemini available to companies through its Google Cloud Vertex AI service.

Google did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Last month, the company introduced generative AI to its Search tool for users in India and Japan that will show text or visual results to prompts, including summaries. It had also made its AI-powered tools available to enterprise customers at a monthly price of $30 per user.

Alphabet Inc’s Google will make it mandatory for all election advertisers to add a clear and conspicuous disclosure starting mid-November when their ads contain AI generated content, the company said on Wednesday.

The policy would apply to image, video, and audio content, across its platforms, the company said in a blog post.

A boom in the adoption of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has given rise to opportunities for the use of AI tools to create content such as scripts for movies to even video, images and sound for advertisements.

Deepfakes created by AI algorithms threaten to blur the lines between fact and fiction, making it difficult for voters to distinguish the real from the fake.

Google-owned cybersecurity firm Mandiant said last month that it had seen increasing use of AI to conduct manipulative information campaigns online in recent years, though the technology’s use in other digital intrusions had been limited so far.

Generative AI would enable groups with limited resources to produce higher quality content at scale, according to Mandiant.

Google has been under fire for misinformation on its platforms, and has been rolling out updates to its transparency measures as the United States will choose its next president in November next year.

Any synthetic content that is irrelevant to the claims made in the ad will be exempted from the disclosure requirements, the advertising and search engine giant said.