Google: Even more AI moves into the search engine

Google's AI answers in search, AI Overviews, are not yet available in Germany. In the USA, however, they are already being expanded. More search queries are to be answered with a text in natural language that appears above all links. "Like it or not", writes The Verge, meaning "whether you like it or not". And that seems to suit the mood. The AI Overviews don't seem to be going down very well yet.

According to Google, more and more people are using the function - more than a billion people, according to the blog post. This probably means that more than a billion people have access to it. The AI Overviews are not a function that can be switched on and off. Google decides when an AI answer is worthwhile, i.e. when it makes sense to answer a question with a continuous text instead of a list of links.

And from now on, this will be more questions. The basis for AI Overviews is Gemini, Google's large language model, which is now being upgraded to version 2.0. According to Google, even more difficult questions, such as those relating to coding or mathematics, can now be answered – better and faster, meaning that more AI Overviews will appear. In addition, it used to be the case that you had to be logged in with a Google account to see the AI Overviews. This will no longer be the case in future. The exclusion of young people will also be removed.

The tension between AI in search

The AI Overviews have already been wrong a few times – Glue on pizza and pasta in petrol were not brilliant answers from the search engine. However, it is unclear whether this is more often the case than with Perplexity or the search with ChatGPT, for example; so far there seem to be only experience reports and no analyses. In any case, people appear to find it more difficult to use Google's AI answers than those of the competition. Google itself has introduced a function to prevent AI answers. Under "more" you will find a pure text-based web search. In the US press and on social networks, there was talk of the function helping to "finally get rid of AI overviews".

The new AI Mode can initially be found in Google's Labs test environment in the USA. This involves the reasoning and multimodal capabilities of AI, which can be used to answer even more complex questions. This means that you get an AI-generated answer to every question, including further questions and links to the sources. Another new feature is that Google no longer only accesses web content, but also uses its Knowledge Graph. This is Google's gigantic database, in which information is collected – from the height of the Eiffel Tower to the constantly updated opening times of restaurants and museums and products that can be purchased.

Google says that it is still most important to them that people use the search engine to find the content they are looking for on the Internet. The problem for content creators, however, is that if their content is already in the AI overview, no one will click on the link to get to the website. However, website operators usually earn money from advertising on the website. This previously common business model is crumbling thanks to AI.

(emw)