Google announced Wednesday that it’s giving its signature product, the search engine, an AI makeover—potentially transforming the way users view search results after Microsoft announced a similar plan.
Google results with AI will be available to select people in the U.S. who apply for a waitlist to be part of Search Lab, where they’ll be able to test out how the product is working and give Google feedback, the company announced Wednesday at its annual developer conference, Google I/O.
Search with AI will be labeled as an experiment for users—though it won’t be available for at least a few weeks—and Google said the AI-generated information will be more factual than conversational, unlike other AI tools like ChatGPT, AP reported; however, Google also announced Wednesday that Bard, its chatbot-like experiment, is now widely available for people to try. Combining AI with Google Search will let users type a question into the search bar and receive one main result that synthesizes the information gathered—but there will still be normal search links provided below the generated answer.
The company did not provide a timeline for when AI-based results will roll out to the general public. Contra The service will not be able to respond to certain questions about health and finance matters. People searching for those will continue to be directed to normal search results for their answers.
