After Microsoft added conversational AI support to its browsers, Bing and Edge, Google seems to be following suit. CEO Sundar Pichai said that the company has been researching many new search engine products, a conversational AI-enabled being one of them.
This new updated version of the search engine will allow users to ask follow-up questions on their initial query, making their experience more personalized.
There have been a lot of speculations about the threat of such an AI protocol to the search engine industry. However, Pichai has dismissed these rumors. He advocated that these chatbots can make online browsing and search engines “bigger than before”
If the new additions are well-received by initial users, they’ll be rolled out to the masses shortly.
Google has been investing in AI-powered searching for quite some time now. For instance, they announced last month that the company is finally ready to integrate their LLMs more deeply with search engines. They’ll also be opening up access to these LLMs (large language models) to selected developers through an API for faster development.
Google search engine isn’t the only product that’ll be blessed with an AI makeover. The company is also planning to introduce AI features in its Workspace Suite. This targets products like Gmail and Google Docs for selected users.
AI is expected to be the center of attention with respect to Google’s growth for now. Both products used by customers and businesses are likely to see some major changes.
For faster development and deployment, Pichai said that both the main AI units of Google— Google Brain and DeepMind will work together on the upcoming projects.
I expect a lot more, stronger collaboration because some of these efforts will be more compute-intensive, so it makes sense to do it at a certain scale together.Sundar Pichai
Speaking in support of AI, Pichai adds that over time AI will become more accessible than expected. It’ll enable both people and small businesses to run their own algorithms on their personal devices.
Google’s Comeback After The Massive Bard Failure
The surprising turn of events might just give Google an upper hand once again over Microsoft. When the latter announced its plan to collaborate with Chat GPT, it was expected that this move would dethrone Google from its long-held position as the world’s most popular and widely used search engine.
During a demo, when Bard gave a wrong answer to a sample question, the company’s shares lost $100 billion in the market overnight.
Not only was Bard not as popular as ChatGPT, but it was also considered to be far less reliable. On top of that, when Google tried to compete with Microsoft and ChatGPT with its very own AI-powered chatbot Bard, and it miserably failed, it was considered to be the final nail in the coffin.
However, instead of giving up, Google is trying to develop a better AI tool that’s accurate and reliable by working on their language models.
Sundar Pichai also aims to increase the team’s productivity by at least 20%. During an interview, he confirmed that a lot of progress had been made, and he was happy with the results. However, there’s still a long way to go.
