Google introduces new Generative AI in its search engine

Google has introduced a new Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) that transforms and creates new opportunities for content to be discovered on its search engine.

This was made known at a media roundtable in Lagos focusing on introducing its Search Labs and Search Generative Experience (SGE) to the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region.The General Manager, Google Search, Africa, Ms Wambui Kinya, said at the roundtable that the SGE was a new generative AI experience in Search to help one get even more from a single search.Kinya said that with the new generative AI capabilities in Search, Google was taking more of the work out of searching.The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Search Generative Experience (SGE) was initially introduced at Google’s I/O event, but was now being expanded to new locations in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) for an Opt-in experience in search lab.It is also being expanded to Spanish-speaking nations, including those in the United State of America.The general manager said that Google was reimagining a supercharged Search that does the heavy lifting in search engine, so one would be able to understand a topic faster, uncover new viewpoints and insights and get things done more easily.She said that the SGE was the first step taken in the experimental journey and a part of Google’s vision to make Search radically more helpful.“We are excited to bring this to the SSA region, and look forward to receiving feedback and iterating on the experience alongside our users over the next few months.“SGE first delivers an overview and beneath this, users will see suggested next steps where they can simply tap a query or type in a specific follow-up question.“This conversational experience enables people to intuitively learn more about the topic they’re exploring,” she said.According to Kinya, with new breakthroughs in generative AI, Google is reimagining what a search engine can do and is bringing these powerful new capabilities to Search in a bold and responsible way.She said that this new technology could unlock entirely new types of questions that Search could not previously answer, and transforms the way information is organised in Search to help people sort through.Kinya added that Google had designed the AI-powered experience to drive attention to content on the web for users to explore more on their findings.While speaking on the generative AI, she said ads are displayed to help people find relevant products and services.Kinya said: “This new generative experience search ads will continue to appear in dedicated ad slots throughout the page.“Google will continue to uphold its commitment to ads transparency and making sure ads are distinguishable from organic search results.“When Search ads do appear, they will continue to feature their industry-leading clear and transparent ad labels with the “Sponsored” label in bold black text.”The general manager noted that context would be carried over from question to question to help people more on their explorations.She said that Google had trained the models used in SGE to uphold Search’s high bar for quality, adding that this would continue to improve over time.According to her, these hallmark systems have been fine-tuned for decades, but will also have additional guardrails, like limiting the types of queries where generative AI capabilities will appear.She explained that Google was bringing the SGE as an experiment in Search Labs, available on Chrome desktop and the latest version of the Google app on Android and iOS.Kinya urged people to opt-in to try it out by simply tapping the Labs icon in the Google app or Chrome desktop.