Google’s Search Generative Experience, or SGE, is an experimental AI-powered version of Search that’s getting some new improvements over the next week, including results with integrated images and videos, the company said in a blog post on Wednesday.
For those who’ve signed up for Google SGE, search results will soon include videos and images. So, for example, when searching for how-to do a specific Yoga pose, not only will Google’s AI engine generate a text description, information its gathered from scrubbing the internet, it will also loop in videos from YouTube.
Since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT late last year, an AI chatbot that can give a human-like response to essentially any question, there’s been a mad dash from Big Tech to push AI-powered products to market. Google released Bard earlier this year and Microsoft upped its investment in OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, integrating AI-results directly into Bing. There’s also been a crush of companies piggybacking off of AI technology to bring more bespoke services, including AI-powered language learning, selfies and dating. The impact of generative AI is so great that it could add $4.4 trillion in value to the global economy annually, according to McKinsey Global Institute.
One thing that makes Google’s SGE different from AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Bard is that it actually lists the sources it’s pulling information from on the side. This is handy for researching as you can actually go to the sourced website and reference it yourself. Google is making a small tweak to this, however. Now, Google has added publish dates to the websites linked on the side, so you can see which website or blog has the most up-to-date info right in Search.
Along with more visual changes to SGE, the speed of generated results has gotten faster. Last month, Google said it cut the speed of generated results by half. The company says it’s working on making results even faster.
