Google Search Introduces New Generative AI Capabilities and Shopping Experience

Highlights:

• Google has announced new generative AI capabilities in its search engine, aimed at providing users with more comprehensive and useful information on a variety of topics, as well as a new shopping experience.
• The new AI-powered capabilities can help users understand complex topics faster, uncover new perspectives and insights, and get things done more easily.
• Google’s generative AI technology will provide an AI-powered snapshot of key information to consider, with links to dig deeper, as well as suggested next steps, including the ability to ask follow-up questions in a new conversational mode.
• In addition to improving the search experience, Google’s new AI-powered shopping experience will provide users with a comprehensive view of the products they are interested in, including product descriptions, reviews, ratings, prices, and product images, using Google’s Shopping Graph – the world’s most comprehensive dataset of constantly-changing products, sellers, brands, reviews, and inventory.
• Google’s new experiences will also highlight and drive attention to content on the web, making it easy for people to dive deeper on the topic they’re learning about, while still upholding its commitment to ads transparency and making sure ads are distinguishable from organic search results.
• Google is taking a responsible and deliberate approach to bringing new generative AI capabilities to Search, with guardrails in place to limit the types of queries where these capabilities will appear, and training models to uphold Search’s high bar for quality.
• The new generative AI capabilities are currently available in Google’s Search Labs experiment, called Search Generative Experience (SGE), available on Chrome desktop and the Google App (Android and iOS) in the U.S. (English-only at launch), with access to SGE beginning in the coming weeks.

Google is taking search to a whole new level with its latest launch of generative artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. The search engine has been evolving over the past 25 years, powered by advancements in AI, such as Lens and multisearch, and it is now poised to transform the way we find and process information.

With generative AI, Google’s search engine is taking on the heavy lifting of searching, allowing users to understand topics faster, uncover new viewpoints, and insights. Google is now able to unlock entirely new types of questions, making it easier for users to sort through and make sense of the vast amount of information available.

Google’s latest move is its first steps in this new era of Search, which will be available in Search Labs, a new way to access early experiments in Search. Users will be able to try out these new generative AI capabilities, which are designed to help make complex purchase decisions more comfortable and faster, with a complete picture of noteworthy factors to consider and products that fit the bill.

The generative AI shopping experience is built on Google’s Shopping Graph, which has more than 35 billion product listings, the world’s most comprehensive dataset of constantly-changing products, sellers, brands, reviews, and inventory.

Users will also find helpful jumping-off points to web content and a range of perspectives that they can dig into. Google has designed these new experiences to highlight and drive attention to content on the web, making it easy for people to dive deeper on the topic they’re learning about.

While ads are a vital piece of how the web works, Google has committed to upholding its commitment to ads transparency and making sure ads are distinguishable from organic search results. In this new generative experience, Search ads will continue to appear in dedicated ad slots throughout the page.

Google is taking a responsible and deliberate approach to bringing new generative AI capabilities to Search. These models have been trained to uphold Search’s high bar for quality, and Google will continue to make improvements over time. They rely on the hallmark systems that Google has fine-tuned for decades, and Google has also applied additional guardrails, like limiting the types of queries where these capabilities will appear.

Google’s experiment in Search Labs, called SGE (Search Generative Experience), is available on Chrome desktop and the Google App (Android and iOS) in the U.S. (English-only at launch). Users can expand their view to see how the response is corroborated and click to go deeper.

Google is inviting users to sign up for Search Labs today, with access to SGE beginning in the coming weeks. Users can tap the Labs icon in the Google app or Chrome desktop to express their interest, and visit labs.google.com/search to learn more.