Google plans to sway the youth by making its search engine “visual, snackable, personal, and human,” the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.
The move comes as artificial intelligence (AI) applications such as ChatGPT are rapidly gaining in popularity, highlighting a technology that could upend the way businesses and society operate.
The tech giant will nudge its service further away from “10 blue links,” which is the traditional format for presenting search results, and plans to incorporate more human voices as part of the shift, the report said.
At its annual Input/Output (I/O) developer conference in the coming week, Google is expected to debut new features that allow users to carry out conversations with an AI program, a project code-named “Magi,” WSJ added, citing people familiar with the matter.
Earlier this year, Bing Search added ChatGPT to its toolbox, instantly attracting millions of users. Meanwhile, Google’s attempts at launching its own chatbot, dubbed Bard, were not as successful as a promotional video for Bard showed the program answering a question incorrectly, helping shave $100 billion off Alphabet’s market value.
Generative AI has become a buzzword this year, with applications capturing the public’s imagination and sparking a rush among companies to launch similar products they believe will change the nature of work.
ChatGPT’s success and the hype surrounding the AI-based tool inspired many to join in on the race for users. For example, China’s Google-esqe counterpart Baidu introduced its chatbot dubbed Ernie Bot. Meanwhile, Sberbank, Russia’s largest banking institution, announced the release and testing phase of the nation’s first ChatGPT competitor named GigaChat.