Getty Images
Google is rolling out a new tool in the UK that will generate results using artificial intelligence (AI), in a significant shake-up to the world’s most popular search engine.
Instead of a list of search results showing links to other websites in blue type, people who choose “AI Mode” will be given an answer written in a conversational style, containing far fewer links to other pages.
The new search tool will not replace Google’s existing search platform, which processes billions of queries every day.
But experts predict such tools will increasingly incorporate AI, a shift that is concerning organisations, firms and publishers, which rely on search traffic.
People are increasingly turning to AI chatbots such as ChatGPT instead of traditional search engines to find quick, simple answers to questions, even though they are not always accurate.
Google itself already includes a brief AI-generated “overview” in the listed results for some searches.
And the new tool, which uses Google’s Gemini AI platform to generate its answers, has already been launched in the US and India.
It is being rolled out in the UK over the next few days.
For now, AI Mode will be optional and will appear both as a tab and an option within the search box itself.
Complicated queries
The tech giant said it was responding to changes in the way people use its search engine to ask more complicated questions.
“About two years ago, if you spilled coffee on your carpet, you would have [searched for] ‘clean carpet stain’,” said Google’s product manager for search, Hema Budaraju.
“That’s how you would have probably keyworded your way through.
“Now, my query is likely to be, ‘I spilled coffee on my Berber carpet, I’m looking for a cleaner that is pet friendly’.”
Getty Images
AI Mode has already been rolled out in the US and India
The BBC was unable to test the tool with its own questions during the demo because the tool had not yet been activated in the UK.
But Google provided a demo using the example of someone searching for suitable places to take a young family strawberry picking.
However, the answers it provided seemed to be spread over a wide geographical area. It featured a handful of links to businesses, including their locations on a map, but they came lower down in the response, compared to a traditional Google search.
Clicking links
Businesses, from retailers to news publishers, currently rely on web traffic funnelled their way from Google’s search results. Firms can pay for prime spots on the results lists, as a form of advertising.
A shift towards AI-generated responses, containing fewer direct links, could up-end that model.
Ms Budaraju said the firm had not yet finalised how advertising revenue for AI Mode would work, or whether firms would be able to pay to be included in the response.
But it is already concerning some businesses, who say people are less likely to click through to their websites via the links contained in an AI summary.
Ms Budaraju disagreed with this characterisation.
“I would say that I think people are going to use these technologies to unlock newer information-seeking journeys,” she said.
“These kind of questions didn’t happen before, and now you made it really possible for people to express anything a lot more naturally.”
The Daily Mail claims the number of people who click its links from Google search results has fallen by around 50% on both desktop and mobile traffic since Google introduced its AI Overview feature.
And a recent study by the Pew Research Centre suggested that people only clicked a link once in every 100 searches when there was an AI summary at the top of the page. Google argues the research methodology in that study was flawed.
News model
Rosa Curling, director of the campaign group Foxglove which commissioned the research, said she was concerned what the increased use of AI might mean for news organisations.
Although AI-generated summaries are often inaccurate, people weren’t clicking through to the original news items they were based on, she said, undermining the business models of news organisations.
“What the AI summary now does is makes sure that the readers’ eyes stay on the Google web page,” she said.
“And the advertising revenue of those news outlets is being massively impacted.”
Google said it already generates more than two billion AI Overview boxes every day in more than 40 languages, although not in the EU, where legislation procludes it.
There are also significant concerns about the environmental impact of increased AI use. Running AI requires huge data centres that use a lot of power and clean water.
Ms Budaraju said Google remained committed to sustainability.
“We are constantly, as Google and as Search, evolving sustainable ways to serve technology,” she said.