Citi Expects Generative AI to Benefit Search Engine Industry

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to be a plus for the search engine industry.

Citi Analyst Ronald Josey said Monday (April 24) in an investor note that generative AI will likely increase overall search volume and that as query costs come down, the technology is likely to benefit the industry, Seeking Alpha reported Monday.

Speaking of Google in particular, Josey said in the investor note that the search engine saw a 3% year-over-year increase in traffic in March and its Chrome browser retained the same market share it had a year ago, at 65%, according to the report.

Josey also said in the note that he will be looking for updates on Google’s conversational AI chatbot, Bard, during Google parent company Alphabet’s earnings call that will be held Tuesday (April 25), per the report.

Citi did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

As PYMNTS reported Feb. 9, technical innovations powered by generative AI have taken on a rapidly increased prominence across the marketplace due to the viral success of OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT, which Alphabet competitor Microsoft has poured billions of dollars into.

In addition, Elon Musk has announced his own plans to launch a generative AI company to compete in this arena.

The soaring interest in generative AI forced Alphabet to start building its own all-new AI-powered search engine as it feels the pressure of increased competition from industry peers and rivals.

On Wednesday (April 19), it was reported that Google will in the coming months use generative AI to craft ads based on material created by human marketers, an application that will join the existing one in which the company’s ad business already uses AI to create prompts encouraging users to purchase products.

By integrating its newest generative AI—the same one behind Bard—Google can produce much more advanced campaigns and “remix” advertisers’ content to make ads based on target audiences, the Financial Times reported.

On Thursday (April 20), Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in a blog post that Google has been an “AI first” company since 2016 — using the technology to improve Search, YouTube, Gmail and the Pixel phones’ camera — and that “the pace of progress is now faster than ever before.”