Google is expected on Feb. 8 at 8:30 a.m. Eastern to announce the company’s search engine artificial intelligence integrations. It’s free to watch live on YouTube.
“We’re starting with AI-powered features that distill complex data into easily digestible formats,” said Google CEO Sundar Pichai. He wrote on Twitter In the leadership of the event. Despite the recent layoffs, the company is a proven force in Silicon Valley. The viral success of other generative AI models, notably OpenAI’s ChatGPT, has put pressure on the company to accelerate its experimental research for public use.
While Google has dominated online search for years, Microsoft’s Bing has been a distant competitor. Microsoft plans to bundle generative AI into its search engine in hopes of differentiating its OpenAI investor experience from Google and attracting more users. Will this year be a renaissance for Bing? Who knows, but users can soon expect to see a lot of AI-generated content when navigating through their search engine of choice.
Amidst all these announcements, one main question remains: Is artificial AI really ready to help you navigate the web? These models are expensive to power and very difficult to update, and they tend to make onions. Public engagement with the technology is changing rapidly as more people test the tools, but the positive impact of generative AI on the consumer search experience is still largely unproven.
During the event, Google may release more information as part of its response to ChatGPIT, an AI service called “Bard” that uses the company’s language model for chat applications. It’s not yet available to the public, but the company says it’s rolling out the feature to a small group for testing, and that more people will be able to experience Bard in the near future.
You may be familiar with AI text and AI images, but these media are only the starting point of generative AI. Google has started sharing more information about its research into AI audio and AI video options. In Silicon Valley, many startups are vying for attention (and investment windfall) because of the more mainstream use of large-scale language models.
Are you curious about the development of generative AI and want to learn more about this new technology? Check out WIRED’s extensive (human-written) coverage of the topic, including how teachers are using it in schools, how fact-checkers are tackling misinformation, and how it’s changing customer service forever.
