Google races to beat Bing in Artificial Intelligence – 04/16/2023 – Tech

Google employees were shocked when they learned in March that Korean consumer electronics giant Samsung was considering switching from Google to Microsoft Inc’s Bing as the default search engine on its devices.

For years, Bing has ranked second among search engines. Microsoft’s technology, however, became much more interesting to industry players when it added generative artificial intelligence (AI) to its website.

Google’s reaction to Samsung’s intent was “panic,” according to internal messages obtained and verified by The New York Times. An estimated profit of US$ 3 billion (R$ 14.8 billion) per year was at risk only in the contract with the Korean company. Another US$ 20 billion (R$ 98.9 billion) is linked to a similar agreement with Apple, which needs to be renewed this year.

AI competitors like the new Bing are increasingly threatening Google’s dominance of the search market over the past 25 years. In response, Google races to build a new search engine from scratch equipped with this technology. The company is also working on updates to the current platform, according to internal documents obtained by the New York Times report.

The new features, under the name Project Magi, are being created by designers, engineers and executives in, as they are called, race rooms to push and test the latest versions. The new search engine would offer users a much more personalized experience than the company’s current service, based on attempts to anticipate user needs.

Google spokeswoman Lara Levin said in a statement that “not every creative or product-building meeting leads to launches, but as we’ve said before, we’re excited to introduce new AI-powered features and we’ll let you know more. info coming soon.”

Billions of people use Google’s search engine every day for everything from finding restaurants to information to understanding a medical diagnosis. Even the simple blank page with the company logo and an empty text bar in the middle is one of the most visited pages on the internet. Changes to this format would have a significant impact on people’s lives, and until recently it would have been hard to imagine anything challenging the model.

Google has been concerned about competing AI-powered platforms ever since OpenAI, a San Francisco-based startup working with Microsoft, demonstrated the capabilities of ChatGPT in November last year. About two weeks later, Google created a task force within its search division to start developing AI products, said two people familiar with the work, not authorized to discuss it publicly.

Modernizing its search engine has become an obsession at Google, and the planned changes could put new AI technology in cellphones and homes around the world.

Samsung’s threat represented the first potential crack in Google’s apparent absolute dominance over the search market, valued at $162 billion (R$801 billion) in 2022. reason for the Korean manufacturer of cell phones to consider the exchange after 12 years of contract, this was the thesis adopted by the direction of Google. The contract is under negotiation, and Samsung can keep the deal.

However, the idea of ​​Samsung, which produces hundreds of millions of smartphones running Google’s Android system every year, that it would even consider changing its default search engine shocked employees of the search giant.

After some employees were told the company was looking for volunteers this month to write a bid for Samsung, they reacted with emojis and surprise. “Wow, OK, that’s insane,” one person replied.

A Google spokesman said the company was continually improving its search engine to give users and partners more reasons to choose Google. He also said that Android handset makers were free to incorporate other technologies from different companies to improve their customers’ experience.

Reached by the New York Times, Samsung and Microsoft declined to comment.

Google has been doing research in artificial intelligence for years. Its DeepMind lab in London is considered one of the best AI research centers in the world, and the company is a pioneer in AI projects such as self-driving cars and so-called grand language models used in the development of chatbots. In recent years, Google has used this technology to improve the quality of its search engine responses, but has postponed the full implementation of AI because it understands that the resource is prone to generating false and biased statements.

Now the priority is to master the new industry sensation. Last month, Google launched its own Bard chatbot, but the technology has received negative reviews among others.

Plans for the new search engine, which demonstrates Google’s ambition to reimagine the search experience, are still in the early stages, with no release date set.

The system would learn what users want to know based on previous searches done in the new model. This would offer pre-selected lists or options of items to buy, search information, and other information. He would also have more capacity for dialogue – how to talk to a solicitous person.

Long before the system rebuild is possible, however, the Magi project will add features that existed in the search model, according to internal documents. Google has more than 160 people working full time on it, said a person familiar with the project.

Magic would keep the ads among the search results. Searches that might lead to financial transactions, like buying shoes or booking flights, for example, would still have advertising in the link list.

This matters to Google, as ads are the company’s primary source of revenue. Its chatbot, Bard, has no advertising, and the industry is lacking projections of the effect of AI chatbots on ad relevance for users.

Last week, Google invited some employees to test out Magi features and encouraged them to ask the search engine questions to gauge the technology’s ability to hold conversations. The search giant is expected to launch these tools in May and add more features between September and December, according to planning notes.

The company plans to release the tools to a select audience of no more than 1 million people. That number would gradually increase to 30 million by the end of the year — all from the United States.

Google has also been making efforts to allow its customers to use the AI-assisted Google Earth mapping platform and be able to find music by talking to a chatbot, a Google director wrote in a document.

Other product ideas are in various stages of planning. A tool called GIFI would use AI to generate results on Google Images. Another, Tivoli Tutor, would teach teachers new languages ​​based on open conversations with artificial intelligences.

Yet another product, Searchalong, would allow users to ask a chatbot questions while browsing in Google Chrome. People could ask the chatbot about leisure activities near an AirBnB accommodation, for example, and the AI ​​would scour the page and the rest of the internet for answers.

Jim Lecinski, a former Google vice president of sales and services, said the company was pressured into action and now has to convince users that it is as “powerful, competent and contemporary” as the competition.

“If we’re leading among search engines, and these are the new qualities of search engines, the new features, we want to make sure we’re in the race as well,” Lecinski, now a professor of marketing at Northwestern University, said in an interview.