The shopping center. With all the potential of AI like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, we wondered where the tech giants would start to integrate this new technology. The answer: on the online purchasing side, as close to your wallet as possible.
Google lifted the veil at the beginning of summer on what its search engine could very soon become thanks to the addition of elements taken from its artificial intelligence system, called PaLM. Rather than providing a litany of web addresses, Google hopes to directly provide information, advice, and recommendations.
Amazon has certainly sensed the threat posed by this Google of the future. This would explain why it has just invested US$4 billion in an American start-up called Anthropic, a rival to leaders in AI research and development like Google and OpenAI, the laboratory from which ChatGPT comes.
Currently, North American Internet users find about half of the products they buy online on Amazon. The integration of AI in Google’s search engine, and to a lesser extent in Bing, on Microsoft’s side, threatens its generous share of the online shopping pie.
Search and find
“Everyone knows how to search, but we haven’t completely solved the problem: Internet users don’t yet know how to find things properly. We think we can do a better job with AI. » That’s how Microsoft’s director of AI research and marketing Divya Kumar sums up Bing’s ongoing transformation.
This fall, Microsoft is launching a new AI application called Copilot, which will be integrated into its Windows 11 system, and all of its applications, including Bing and Edge, its web browser.
Building on its exclusive partnership with OpenAI, Microsoft leveraged its generative AI early in 2023 to add a chat function to its search engine. The next step: merge this chat with more traditional results pages to help refine the search, and thus find the best possible result.
We will overturn the online search model
The best applications of this combination are on the shopping side. Right now, a parent who wants to buy soccer shoes for their son’s birthday that will allow them to perform a rabona worthy of the pros would not know which brand, let alone which model to consider. Bing or Google offers dozens, even hundreds of shoes, of all colors, of all prices.
In their next version, search engines will ask the Internet user questions to provide at most only a handful of more precise results. What level does son play at? What is his position on the ground? Who are his favorite professional players? Etc.
At Google and Microsoft, we anticipate a whole revolution in online search. We do not yet know how online buyers will react. Retailers will probably have to review their online presence to ensure they fall into the good graces of all these AIs that risk short-circuiting their websites.
“We are going to overturn the model of online research,” adds Divya Kumar. For example, travelers will no longer have to book their flight, hotel, restaurant and museum visit one after the other. They will suddenly get a complete itinerary, which they can then refine if they wish. »
Easier in store
AIs like ChatGPT are systems for understanding and generating natural language. In other words, they are very advanced digital dialogs. They attempt to interpret the words given to them, and then use them to produce information of their own.
This mechanism is easier to do with concrete subjects, such as a soccer shoe, or a bicycle, than it is for more abstract subjects, such as a political theory or a current event. Modern AIs can easily absorb the spec sheet and user reviews for a single bike to determine if it fits your search criteria.
The more abstract your research, the more complicated it gets. Comparing the ideology of different political parties will be a headache for the AI, especially since this ideology evolves over time and often changes from one member of the same party to another.
“We try to provide the most accurate answer possible, but that’s also why we clearly indicate the sources from which the data provided in the answer are taken, users always have the possibility of checking the information provided to them,” recalls Divya Kumar.
In other words, AIs are currently more practical in stores than in schools. This is an important lesson for all those students who think they can save themselves research work by entrusting the task to Bing or ChatGPT…