Google Unveils AI-Enhanced Search Amid Skepticism

Google has announced a major upgrade to its search engine, the Search Generative Experience (SGE), incorporating advanced AI capabilities. However, some experts and users are skeptics about this new AI-powered search, worried about potential drawbacks.

The key new AI-enabled features include:

Generative AI in Search: This allows Google’s custom AI model, Gemini, to search and summarize results directly for users, reducing the effort required.

AI Overviews: Providing a concise overview of topics with the option to explore further links and details.

Circle to Search: A new way to visually search any content on an Android device by simply circling it.

AI-powered Multisearch: Combining text queries with images or screenshots to provide enhanced results with AI-generated insights.

While Google touts these capabilities as making search more efficient and intuitive, some are skeptical about ceding so much control to AI systems known to sometimes “hallucinate” incorrect facts.

“Google Search’s simplicity was its biggest strength – just enter words and get a ranked list of relevant web pages,” argues one technology writer. “Cramming AI into the results risks Google forgetting what made it so useful in the first place.”

Others warn about the risks of treating AI as an authoritative source of truth. “AI has a tendency to present hallucinated facts as absolute truth,” cautions another expert. Google curating one ‘correct’ AI-generated answer could give a dangerous illusion of trustworthiness.”

There are also concerns about whether Google’s AI is reliable enough yet, with reports of the Overviews tool telling users to “eat rocks” amidst other obvious mistakes. Some question whether the AI search upgrades need to be rolled back or heavily refined.

As Google pushes forward with its AI transition, skeptics worry the company may be compromising the core principles of open, impartial information access that allowed search to become so powerful in the first place.

Further reading:

Some news from Google and responses from Techradar, Inverse and NewScientist

Here are some key features of this new AI-enhanced search:

• Generative AI in Search: This feature allows Google to search for you. With expanded AI Overviews, more planning and research capabilities, and AI-organized search results, Google’s custom Gemini model can take the legwork out of searching¹.

 

• AI Overviews: This feature provides a quick overview of a topic and links to learn more. It has been found that with AI Overviews, people use Search more and are more satisfied with their results.
• Circle to Search: This is a new way to search anything on your Android phone screen without switching apps. With a simple gesture, you can select images, text or videos in whatever way comes naturally to you².
• AI-powered Multisearch Experience: When you point your camera (or upload a photo or screenshot) and ask a question using the Google app, the new multisearch experience will show results with AI-powered insights that go beyond just visual matches².

In summary, Google’s new AI-enhanced search is not the end of ‘Googling’, but rather a significant evolution that aims to make the search experience more efficient and intuitive. It’s designed to help users find what they’re looking for with a combination of images and text, making the search process more natural and intuitive.

Cramming AI into search results proves Google has forgotten what made it good.

Google Search’s biggest strength, in my opinion, was its perfect simplicity. Punch in some words, and the machine gives you everything the internet has to offer on the subject, with every link neatly cataloged and sorted in order of relevance. Sure, most of us will only ever click the first link it presents – god forbid we venture to the dark recesses of the second page of results – but that was enough. It didn’t need to change; it didn’t need this.

There’s an argument to be made that search AI isn’t for simple inquiries. It’s not useful for telling you the time in Tokyo right now, Google can do that fine already. It’s for the niche interrogations: stuff like ‘best restaurant in Shibuya, Tokyo for a vegan and a lactose intolerant person who doesn’t like tofu’. While existing deep-learning models might struggle a bit, we’re not that far off AIs being able to provide concise and accurate answers to queries like that. Source: Techradar

THE HARD TRUTH ABOUT TRUTH

The thing about web searching is that it’s not just about being easy. Sure, Googling something is, in a lot of ways, a mechanical behavior at this point — as routine as flipping a light switch or vacuuming your floor — but it’s also a loaded one.

When you’re looking something up on the internet, there’s, oftentimes, a right and a wrong answer, as well as a whole spectrum of gray in between. Searching Google is about information, and sometimes that information is important, which means handing over the keys to AI — which from an age perspective, has barely earned its learner’s permit — should be a nerve-wracking prospect.

AI, however ground-breaking it may be now or in the future, still has a tendency to hallucinate facts and present them as though they’re the absolute truth. And yes, Google (AI-infused or not) is already a minefield for bad information, but a regular search, which pulls up a page of possible answers, still invites you to peruse varying sources.

AI-powered search, on the other hand, purports to carry out that vetting for you, narrowing your vision of possible answers, and giving the illusion of a more trusted result. It goes without saying that truth is important, and on a scale as big as Google’s, the stakes get even higher. Source: Inverse.

Can Google fix its disastrous new AI search tool?

Google’s AI Overviews tool can offer impressive answers to search queries, but it will also make up facts and tell people to eat rocks. Can it be fixed, or will it have to be scrapped? Source: NewScientist