The end of Google search as we know it
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 13 May 2024
⏱️ 24 minutes
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Summary
Google is changing the way its search feature works, feeding users AI-generated replies to their questions rather than directing them to other websites.
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At its annual developer conference this week, tech giant Google is expected to tout big changes to its signature product, search. Instead of directing users to a list of websites or showing them an excerpt, Google’s AI will craft paragraphs of text that tries to answer users’ questions directly.
AI reporter Gerrit De Vynck says the change could have huge consequences for the internet. Because AI chatbots are still unreliable, and because the information feeding the generative answers comes from a range of sources, users will need to watch out for false information. And the new format means that sources across the web – bloggers, businesses, newspapers and other publishers – are likely to see a huge loss of traffic.
Gerrit joins us to break down what the changes to Google search mean for users, and why the company is moving in this direction.
Today’s show was produced by Emma Talkoff. It was edited by Lucy Perkins and mixed by Sean Carter. Thanks also to Heather Kelly.
Also on the show: The Climate Solutions team at the Post has an eye-opening story about the benefits of leaving your lawn unmowed and letting nature do its thing. Read it here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good morning everyone. Welcome to Google I. O. So every year Google has this big |
| 0:09.4 | conference and its beautiful sunny California campus about an hour and a half south of San Francisco, |
| 0:16.2 | where they sort of roll out all the things that they've been working on. |
| 0:19.8 | CEO will go on stage and make a big speech about how he sees the world and Google's place in it. |
| 0:30.0 | Garrett Devink covers artificial intelligence for the post and he's going to be at Google I. |
| 0:35.2 | This week. |
| 0:36.2 | He has a pretty good idea of what the focus is going to be, because it was a focus of last year's |
| 0:40.3 | conference, too. |
| 0:41.6 | Artificial Intelligence. Here's Google CEO Sundar Pichai back in |
| 0:46.2 | 2023. With generative AI, we are taking the next step. With a bold and responsible approach, we are reimagining all our core products, |
| 0:57.0 | including search. |
| 0:59.0 | If you have used Google Search lately, and let's be real, who who hasn't you might have already noticed |
| 1:04.7 | changes in the results served up to you that's because Google has already started |
| 1:09.5 | rolling out this big AI update to lots of users. Instead of pointing you to other |
| 1:15.2 | websites, Google will reply to your question directly with complex paragraphs of |
| 1:21.4 | AI generated text. |
| 1:23.6 | They're gonna put their own AI written, |
| 1:26.2 | AI generated answers at the top of search results |
| 1:29.2 | for a lot more people than sort of the preliminary test that they've been doing up to this point. |
| 1:34.8 | And this week, they're expected to push these AI-generated answers out to even more people. |
| 1:40.9 | So like it or not, AI is coming to your Google search results. |
| 1:45.0 | And because AI chatbots are still quite unreliable, you really need to make sure that if you're seeing |
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