Google Is Planning to Enhance its Existing AI Features and Develop a New Search Engine

Highlights:

• According to The Times, Google’s project needs a clearer timeline, making it unclear when the features might go live.
• The Times reports that Google plans to debut Magi next month before adding more new features in the following months.

When its core business is under the most serious threat in years, Google LLC is reportedly rushing to introduce new features and capabilities in its search engine powered by artificial intelligence.

According to reports, the company is developing a brand-new, AI-powered search engine and is considering updating its current search technology with AI features.

The changes are Google’s response to Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.’s suggestion that it might stop using Google Search and switch to Microsoft Bing as its default mobile search engine, the New York Times reported recently.

According to The Times, Google could lose Samsung and suffer a loss of revenue of more than USD 3 billion annually. The suggestion allegedly caused widespread “panic” within Google; as a result, forcing the company to scramble to keep up with the surge in demand for technologies like ChatGPT.

As details obtained by the Times from internal emails, Google’s response is to update its search engine as part of a project called “Magi.” According to reports, Google has 160 employees working in “sprint rooms” to develop new AI-powered Google Search features.

Since December of last year, when executives first understood the significance of OpenAI LP’s ChatGPT and how it might present a problem for search, Google is said to have been in a frenzy. When Microsoft Corp. revealed plans to integrate ChatGPT with Bing in February, the threat to Google’s decades-long search market dominance only grew. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, responded by pledging soon to update Google Search with new AI chat features.

A new service that will try to predict what users are looking for before they search is one of the new features Google is developing as part of a “more personalized” experience. According to The Times, Google’s project needs a clearer timeline, making it unclear when the features might go live.

A Chrome feature called “Searchalong” that would scan the website the user is reading and provide contextual information is among the other new features rumored to be in the works. The business is also developing a chatbot that can provide code snippets in response to questions about software engineering. A second chatbot would aid in music discovery. More experimental features, including “GIFI” and “Tivoli Tuto,” are also being developed, allowing users to ask Google Image Search to create images and communicate with a chatbot in a different language.

However, it should be noted that many of these features are only partially original. For instance, There is an existing image generation function in Slides, and Tivoli Tutor sounds a lot like Duolingo Inc.’s learning app.

Google’s apparent panic and haste to enhance the capabilities of its search engine, according to analyst Charles King of Pund-IT Inc., shows how flawed the ad-based search model has grown. He said, “Once upon a time, a search engine’s value was based on the quality of results it delivered, but today it’s likely that the top five or ten results you see for any given search will consist of sponsored ad links from some commercial entity.”

As a result, all internet users could gain from improved search capabilities. King said he would be surprised if Google couldn’t produce new AI-based tools that are at least on par with Microsoft’s, if not superior to them.

King said, “That said, the history of the tech industry is littered with stories of once-unstoppable firms that were undermined by more nimble and advanced competitors. Remember when Microsoft Explorer dominated the browser market to the point that the company was successfully challenged on anti-trust grounds? Then along came Google Chrome. Maybe this is just the latest tale of ‘what goes around, comes around'”.

According to Constellation Research Inc.’s Holger Mueller, who is more upbeat, Google’s plan to create a brand-new search engine based on generative AI makes sense because incremental innovation may only go so far in developing next-generation search. The analyst said, “At the same time, the coming reported updates are a good move as they can hedge against Microsoft Bing’s new AI capabilities. Though Google will in any case need to be cautious, as the verdict is still out on whether or not generative AI can really improve search experiences.”

According to The Times, Google plans on introducing Magi in the coming month before following up with more features in the fall. According to this timeline, more information about Magi might be made public on May 10 during Google I/O 2023. According to reports, Google intends to first make Magi’s features available to 1 million test subjects before making them available to 30 million users by the end of the year. Magi will initially only be made available in the United States.

Google declined to respond to the Times’ claims in a statement directly but claimed that it has been incorporating AI capabilities into Google Search for years through features like Lens and multisearch, among others.

A Google spokesperson said, “We’ve done so in a responsible and helpful way that maintains the high bar we set for delivering quality information. Not every brainstorm deck or product idea leads to a launch, but as we’ve said before, we’re excited about bringing new AI-powered features to Search, and will share more details soon.”