Facing renewed competition from Microsoft and OpenAI, Google is purportedly in a race to build an entirely new AI-driven search engine. The New York Times reports that the company is in the initial stages of constructing a search service that will strive to predict user needs to provide a more tailored experience.
The undertaking has no specific timeline, but it is known that Google is concurrently developing an array of new AI features for its existing search engine, codenamed “Magi.”
Just like ChatGPT
One of the features under development is a chatbot capable of answering software engineering questions and generating code snippets. Additionally, the company has experimented with a feature that would allow users to search for music via a chatbot conversation. As per The Times, over 160 employees have been assigned to the redesign project.
Google is also developing several other new features, at varying stages of development, including “Searchalong,” a Chrome feature that would allow a chatbot to scan a webpage for contextual information. For instance, if you were browsing Airbnb for a place to stay, you could ask the chatbot to provide recommendations on what to do in the area.
Will Also Work With Images
Google is also experimenting with “GIFI” and “Tivoli Tutor,” two features that allow users to prompt Google Image Search for images and chat with a bot to learn a new language, respectively. It’s worth noting that many of these features have either been previously demoed by Google or exist on other platforms like Duolingo, where image generation is already available in Slides.
The company reportedly plans to announce Magi next month and introduce more new features in the fall, possibly at I/O 2023. Google aims to offer Magi’s features to one million users in the US before expanding the availability to 30 million users by the end of the year.
