The New York Times in a report said, search giant Google is all set to release new AI-powered search tools in May 2023 with more features, which would be released during the fall. But the new features will be exclusively available to Google users in the United States and will be initially released to maximum one million of its users. It is yet to be known exactly what the tools Google is going to offer, but according to tech experts, they will likely build on the conversational promise of Google’s experimental Google Bard chatbot. Google’s chatbot are being developed under the codename ‘Magi’.
These new plans are part of Google’s efforts to counter the threat posed by new systems such as Microsoft’s Bing chatbot and ChatGPT of OpenAI. Industry insiders say, there chatbots may one day replace the traditional search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Baidu despite their initial failings.
It may be mentioned here that Google’s position is currently being threatened as Samsung is considering replacing Google with Bing as the default search engine on its mobile devices. Few more mobile phones companies may also follow Samsung’s footstep.
The deal between Google and Samsung is worth an estimated US$3 billion in annual revenue to Google, while the search giant has a similar deal with Apple worth roughly US$20 billion, though it is not clear how seriously Samsung is considering switching to Bing from Google.
According to experts, Samsung may have been swayed by Microsoft’s AI work, but it might also be simply taking advantage of Google’s moment of weakness.
In addition to new features developed under the codename ‘Magi’, Google is also planning a more drastic rebuild of its search engine. It may be mentioned here that, hundreds and thousands of website contents are not yet available on Google search.
Meanwhile, Google is also reportedly developing a range of other AI tools, including an AI image generator called GIFI, a language learning system called Tivoli Tutor, and a feature called Searchalong that would integrate a chatbot into Google’s Chrome browser to answer questions related to the current web page. This is similar to Microsoft’s Bing AI sidebar for its Edge browser.
