In testing for a year, the new presentation leads to “more searches and more satisfaction for users”, assured Sundar Pichai, the boss of Google.
Google announced Tuesday that search results will now appear as answers written by its generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology, above links to websites, the most significant transformation for the search engine since its launch. creation.
In testing for a year, the new presentation leads to “more searches and more satisfaction for users”, assured Sundar Pichai , the boss of Google, on the stage of an open-air amphitheater at the company’s headquarters. in Mountain View, California. The new formula will first be deployed in the United States before arriving in other countries, to reach more than a billion people by the end of the year.
Online generative search
The American technology giant held its annual conference for developers on Tuesday, under the banner of generative AI (production of content on a simple request in everyday language). “We are still at the very beginning of the transition to the AI era,” Sundar Pichai immediately recalled. According to him, “the most exciting transformation is obviously online generative search on Google”.
Google has already been testing this new way of doing online searches for a year. At the top of the results page, the Internet user receives a written answer to their question, generated by Gemini, Google’s AI model. They can then click on additional question suggestions to go further, or, further down, on traditional website links.
A threat to Google?
Google dominates online search to the point that its name is synonymous with the action. In early 2023, thanks to its massive investments in OpenAI (ChatGPT) , Microsoft added generative AI to Bing, its search engine. In vain: Google remained the reference. But the current technological revolution could still threaten it. All of Silicon Valley is competing for new AI tools and assistants, which make it possible to bypass the world’s number one digital advertising company.
On Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp for example, users can already ask questions to Meta AI, which now has access to the Internet. The strategic analysis firm Gartner predicts that by 2026, the volume of queries to traditional search engines will fall by 25%, as chatbots and AI assistants like ChatGPT and others eat away at market share. walk.
