Last May, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company would use artificial intelligence to redefine all of its products.
But because the new generative AI technology poses risks, such as the spread of false information, Google has been wary of applying the technology to its search engine, which is used by more than two billion people and was responsible for $175 billion in revenue last year.
At Google’s annual conference in Mountain View, Calif., on Tuesday, Mr. Pichai showed how the company’s aggressive work on artificial intelligence has finally made its way into the search engine. Starting this week, he said, US users will see a feature called AI Overviews that creates summaries of information above traditional search results. By the end of the year, more than one billion people will have access to the technology.
AI Overviews is likely to raise fears that web publishers will see less traffic from Google Search, putting more pressure on an industry that has chipped away at other technology platforms. On Google, users will see longer summaries of the topic, which may reduce the need to go to another site, though Google has downplayed those concerns.
“Links included in AI Overviews get more clicks from users than if they were presented as traditional search results,” Liz Reed, Google’s vice president of search, wrote in a blog post. “We will continue to focus on delivering valuable traffic to publishers and creators.”
The company also unveiled a number of other initiatives, including a lightweight AI model, new chips and so-called agents that help users complete tasks in an effort to gain an edge in an AI slugfest with Microsoft and OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT. .
“We’re in the early days of the AI platform shift,” Mr Pichai said at Google’s I/O developer conference on Tuesday. “We want everyone to benefit from what Gemini can do,” including developers, startups and the public.
When ChatGPT was released in late 2022, some tech insiders saw it as a serious threat to Google’s search engine, the most popular way to find information online. Since then, Google has worked aggressively to regain its lead in AI, releasing a family of technologies called Gemini, including new AI models for developers and a chatbot for consumers. It also pushed the technology into YouTube, Gmail, and Docs, helping users create videos, email, and more. letters and drafts with less effort.
Meanwhile, Google’s competition with OpenAI and its partner Microsoft continues. A day before Google’s conference, OpenAI unveiled a new version of ChatGPT that looks more like a voice assistant.
(The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December for copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems.)
At its event in Silicon Valley, Google demonstrated how AI will be embedded deeper into users’ lives. It introduced Project Astra, an experiment to see how AI could act as an agent, talking to users by voice and reacting to pictures and videos. Some of the abilities will be available to users of Google’s Gemini chatbot later this year, Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google’s AI lab DeepMind, wrote in a blog post.
DeepMind also introduced the Gemini 1.5 Flash, an AI model designed to be fast and efficient, but lighter in size than the Gemini 1.5 Pro, a more mid-range model that Google introduced in its to many of the consumer services. Dr.
The company announced another AI model, Veo, which creates high-definition videos based on simple text prompts, similar to OpenAI’s Sora system. Google said some creators can preview Veo, while others can join a waiting list to access it. Later this year, the company expects to bring some of Veo’s capabilities to YouTube Shorts, a video competitor to TikTok, and other products.
Google also showed off the latest versions of its music creation tool, Lyria, and its image generator, Imagen 3. In February, Google’s Gemini chatbot was criticized by users on social media for refusing to create images of white people and for presenting inaccurate depictions of historical accounts. numbers. The company said it will block the ability to create images of people until it fixes the problem.
Over the past three months, more than a million users have signed up for Gemini Advanced, Google’s version of the chatbot, which is available through a $20-a-month subscription, the company said.
In the coming months, Google will add Gemini Live, which will allow users to talk to the chatbot using voice commands. The chatbot will respond in natural-sounding voices, Google said, and users can interrupt Gemini to ask clarifying questions. Later this year, users will be able to use their cameras to show Gemini Live the physical world around them and talk to the chatbot about it.
In addition to AI Overviews, Google’s search engine will feature AI-curated search results pages with generated headings that highlight different types of content. The feature will start with dining and recipe results, and will later be offered for shopping, travel and entertainment queries.
Ms. Reid, the head of search, said in an interview before the conference that she expected the search updates to save users time because Google “can do more of the work for you.”
Mr. Pichai said he expects the vast majority of people to interact with Gemini AI technology through Google’s search engine.
“We’re going to make it easier and easier for people to interact with Gemini,” Mr Pichai said in a briefing ahead of the conference.