For the past 25 years, Google has been devoted to the science and the craft of building a search engine. It has developed completely new ways to search, powered by its latest advancements in AI — whether that’s searching visually with Lens, or across modalities, using both images and text with multisearch. In fact, people now use Lens for 12 billion visual searches a month — a four-fold increase in just two years, and a growing number of those searches are multimodal.
With new breakthroughs in generative AI, Google is again reimagining what a search engine can do. With this powerful new technology, it can unlock entirely new types of questions you never thought Search could answer, and transform the way information is organized, to help you sort through and make sense of what’s out there.
Today Google is sharing a look at its first steps in this new era of Search, and you’ll be able to first try these generative AI capabilities in Search Labs, a new way to access early experiments in Search.
Improving Search with generative AI
With new generative AI capabilities in Search, Google is now taking more of the work out of searching, so you’ll be able to understand a topic faster, uncover new viewpoints and insights, and get things done more easily.
Let’s take a question like “what’s better for a family with kids under 3 and a dog, bryce canyon or arches.” Normally, you might break this one question down into smaller ones, sort through the vast information available, and start to piece things together yourself. With generative AI, Search can do some of that heavy lifting for you.
You’ll see an AI-powered snapshot of key information to consider, with links to dig deeper.
User asking SGE to evaluate two national parks that are best for young kids and a dog Below this snapshot, you’ll see suggested next steps, including the ability to ask follow-up questions, like “How long to spend at Bryce Canyon with kids?” When you tap on these, it takes you to more detailed answers generated by AI.
Introducing Search Labs
These new generative AI capabilities are still experimental and will continue to improve over time. To give you early access to these features and get your feedback, Google is launching Search Labs.
Search Labs is a new way to try out early experiments in Search. You can access it by tapping on your profile picture in the top right corner of the Google app or google.com on your phone. There you’ll see a list of experiments that are currently available for you to try.
Search Labs will be rolling out over the next few weeks in the U.S. on Android and iOS devices. Google invites you to explore these new features and share your feedback to help shape the future of Search.
Leave a Reply