Google Kicks-Off AI Search in the US

Google started using GenAI in its search engine for US users. During the company’s annual I/O developer conference, Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai said AI Overviews will expand from the US to billions of users across various countries by year-end.

AI Overviews uses Google’s Gemini AI model to create search summaries that appear alongside of traditional link-based search queries. At the conference, Liz Reid, who is chief of Google’s Search division, said that GenAI search will do more for users than they have ever imagined. “Whatever is on your mind, whenever you need to get done, just ask and Google will do the googling for you,” she added. Reid explained AI Overview provides a range of prospective answers and links to deeper dives once it receives a general query. It is also capable of answering more complex questions and sub-questions in seconds by using multi-reasoning in search.

At the event, Google also announced improvements to its Gemini Pro 1.5 model for consumers. Pichai stated the model is doubling its context window to 2 million tokens, which means it can answer questions more quickly or ingest video at a faster rate. He has highlighted a future AI chatbot assistant called Project Astra, which will use a smartphone camera to find items such as eyeglasses or identify locations. Google also unveiled a text-to-video AI model called Veo that can create computer-generated footage based on written prompts.