The Facts
Google on Wednesday announced plans to infuse its search engine with more advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technology, three months after Microsoft’s Bing search engine began using similar technology.
Google, whose shares jumped 4% Wednesday, unveiled the Search Generative Experience (SGE) at its annual I/O conference in Mountain View, California. It can respond to open-ended questions while still listing links to websites.
The Spin
Narrative A
Google, which has already been using AI technology to bolster many search functions, is now breathing life into its widely popular search engine. Best of all, Google has decided to increase its focus on providing factual answers over having users interact with a gimmicky chatbot. It’s going to be difficult to cut into Google’s share of the search market.
Narrative B
Don’t celebrate the continuation of Google’s reign over the search world just yet. First, Google must figure out how to maintain its revenue flow if it’s going to be pushing down the paid-for text responses in favor of its AI response. Second, Google suffered a wonky rollout of Bard in February, which cost it big time. So we don’t know how well SGE is going to perform until it’s put into action.
