Google on Wednesday unveiled a series of features enriched by artificial intelligence and announced that it had launched tests to integrate it into its search engine in the midst of a battle against its rival Microsoft in this key area.
During an event organized in Paris in front of dozens of European journalists, the Internet search giant showed augmented reality functionalities, new 3D representations generated from its street images and new search possibilities. information on photos.
He also presented a new research application in works of art.
Three of its executives had made the trip, a way of giving an international and multilingual dimension to its projects based on artificial intelligence (AI).
The day after Microsoft announced the integration of conversational AI ChatGPT into its Bing search engine, in test version, Google did not give details on how its own conversational AI Bard, announced on Monday, would be integrated into its engine.
“We still need massive testing,” acknowledged Prabhakar Raghavan, senior vice president in charge of the search engine.
Like his rival the day before, he felt that the integration of AI would constitute “a new era of research”, the very words of Microsoft boss Satya Nadella.
But he did not want to specify a deadline for a consumer version, repeating that it would be “in a few weeks”. It will be when we are satisfied with the result, ”he added cautiously, alluding to the many setbacks of ChatGPT and other conversational AIs, to the sometimes absurd or inappropriate answers.
He also assured not only that the AI would not give “one right answer”, but also that it would not discourage Internet users from going to other sites.
Analysts fear an impoverishment of the quantity of information, but also of the advertising revenues of all websites.
“We still want people to explore the web,” said Elizabeth Reid, also in charge of the search engine. “People will always want information from people they can relate to. There will always be beauty influencers.”
Google also didn’t say whether its AI answers would point to the sources of its answers, and acknowledged that current AI technology doesn’t guarantee 100% correct answers.
The group assured that it had not yielded to pressure from Microsoft and the global success of ChatGPT to speed up its announcements.
“We have been working on AI for years,” explained its leaders. “No particular event” has prompted us to make its announcements now,” they claimed.