GOOGLE is making a huge change to its popular search engine by infusing AI into the results.
The tech giant has announced it will start showing AI-generated answers after an initial trial in the UK and US.
It means answers to questions will appear at the top on the search result page instead of a list of links.
Google says the feature has already been used billions of times in the experimental phase but now it’s being rolled out widely.
It’ll start with the US first today before launching in more countries “soon”.
There have been concerns that the move could harm content makers and publishers dependent on people visiting their websites.
But Google claims the feature – known as AI Overviews – is leading to people “visiting a greater diversity of websites for help with more complex questions”.
“We see that the links included in AI Overviews get more clicks than if the page had appeared as a traditional web listing for that query,” said Liz Reid, VP, Head of Google Search.
“As we expand this experience, we’ll continue to focus on sending valuable traffic to publishers and creators.”
There have also been questions around the accuracy of AI.
In February, the company apologised after its AI image generation tool refused to create images of white people even when explicitly asked.
In response to requests of images of America’s founding fathers — all white males — Google’s Gemini AI feature included women and people from ethnic minorities.
This latest move comes as Google races to keep up with OpenAI, who announced their own big AI boosts on Monday, including an enhanced chatbot that can see photos and even speak to you like a super-charged Siri.
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