Tag: search

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Mobile Syrup

Google CEO says conversational AI will ‘absolutely’ come to search

Google CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that the company would add conversational artificial intelligence (AI) to search.

“Will people be able to ask questions to Google and engage with LLMs [large language models] in the context of search? Absolutely,” Pichai told WSJ.

Moreover, Pichai explained that Google views conversational AI as an opportunity to expand rather than as a threat to its business model. It’s worth noting that Google previously said it would add LLMs to search, but it hasn’t specified if there would be conversational features.

Of course, the announcement hardly comes as a surprise, given Microsoft beat Google to the punch on conversational AI in search. Microsoft launched Bing Chat, powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4, back in February. The move reportedly led Google to declare a “code red” and rush its own chatbot, Bard, to market. (The rush apparently frustrated some employees).

Since the Bing Chat launch, Microsoft hasn’t slowed down on rolling out AI-powered features to its apps and software. The Edge browser got a sidebar with access to Bing Chat and other AI features, and the company recently detailed plans to add AI to Office products like Word and PowerPoint via Copilot.

Google’s Bard also had some embarrassing gaffes during the product reveal and subsequent preview, eventually prompting Pichai to promise updates to improve Bard’s capabilities.

You can read the full WSJ interview here.

Source: WSJ Via: Engadget

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Mobile Syrup

Google details new search features to help users verify information

Google has detailed new ways for users to find out where information is coming from in search.

A new blog post from the company unveils several features that will help users fact-check results or verify the authenticity of the information.

The first new addition is called ‘About this result’ and aims to help acquaint users with information sources. The feature was first introduced in 2021 and is moving from beta to stable release in search across all platforms.

Users can access About this result by clicking/tapping the three-dot icon next to a search result. About this result offers a short description of the website along with quick links to additional information about things like privacy settings and explainers for how Google search works.

Another change Google is making the ‘About this page’ section easier to access by placing it higher in search results. The section includes a website’s description of itself alongside reviews and other mentions of the website.

Google is also launching a feature called ‘Perspectives’ that aims to highlight multiple perspectives on a topic from various reputable sources, though it’s going to be U.S.-only when it debuts.

Finally, Google plans to add content advisories for results the company has low confidence in. This can apply to emerging topics, such as searchers for news about a recent natural disaster, as well as for topics that are obscure.

You can learn more about these new search changes here.

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Mobile Syrup

Google app on Android gets massive Search bar

Bangkok. Thailand. January 24, 2016:A woman is typing on Google search engine from a laptop. Google is the biggest Internet search engine in the world.

Google has added a comically big Search bar to its Android app.

Now, the pill is practically twice the size, while the ‘Search’ text is displayed in a larger font.

Google Search GIF

That said, Search functions exactly the same otherwise, so this is purely a visual update. iOS users have had this for some time, but it’s finally come to Android.

Alongside the chonky Search bar, Google has introduced a carousel that offers suggestions for actions like searching for products in screenshots, translating text with your camera, identifying songs by listening and more.

For now, the changes are available in the latest version of the Google app beta (12.14). It hasn’t yet rolled out widely to all users.

Image credit: Shutterstock

Via: Android Police

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Mobile Syrup

Startups claim Microsoft is squeezing out search competition as it takes on Google

Microsoft’s Bing Chat put the company’s Bing search engine back on the map, but now search engine startups warn Microsoft is trying to squeeze them out.

Wired reports that startups that previously relied on licensing search results from Bing feel that Microsoft is unfairly squeezing them out of the search space. The main squeeze is a financial one — a week after rolling out Bing Chat in February, Microsoft announced as much as a 10 times increase to standard fees for search data that would come into effect in May.

Another squeeze comes from new rules that the startups say block them from competing with Bing Chat or Google’s Bard by applying steeper fees on those who provide Bing results on a page that also has content from a large language model (LLM). The increase for LLM users is potentially 28 times the previous rate.

LLMs, for those unfamiliar, are the underlying technology behind Google’s Bard and OpenAI’s ChatGPT and GPT-4, which is what Bing Chat runs on.

Search startups using Microsoft data and hoping to add chat-style features told Wired that the cost would crush them. Plus, Microsoft doesn’t offer an API for its chatbot to customers (at least for now).

A Microsoft spokesperson told Wired that the price increase reflects the company’s investments to improve Bing, which includes using LLMs to help rank results. The company claims that has improved search quality more than any other upgrade in the last 20 years.

Bing has become essential to nearly every search startup trying to challenge Google, including DuckDuckGo and You.com. Wired notes that Yahoo stopped developing its own search engine tech in 2009 (and switch to licensing data from Bing), while Google’s comparable API can have differing results from Google’s own results and sometimes requires displaying ads.

As concerning as the price hike is, the new rules increasing prices for LLM use are even more worrying. Wired spoke with several search startups that expressed concern that Microsoft is trying to lock competitors out of what increasingly seems to be the future of search.

Source: Wired

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Mobile Syrup

Google to hold Search, Maps event with AI focus on February 8

Google plans to host an online event dubbed ‘Live from Paris’ on February 8th, where the company will talk about AI, Search, Maps and more.

In the event description on the YouTube page for the event, Google notes that it’s “reimagining how people search for, explore and interact with information, making it more natural and intuitive than ever before to find what you need.” The company goes on to note that it’s “opening up greater access to information for people everywhere, through Search, Maps and beyond.”

Moreover, Android Police reports that Google told the publication it plans to talk about how it will use AI to reshape search.

While that all sounds interesting, it’s worth noting the timing of all this. For one, Google typically doesn’t do announcements like this early in the year — we’d see these at the company’s annual I/O developer conference instead. But that conference is still happening in May as usual.

This suggests Google is trying to react quickly to OpenAI and ChatGPT. Reports have swirled for the last few weeks that Google has gone “code red” over ChatGPT and is rushing to respond, such as by sharing a recent research project called ‘MusicLM‘ that makes music with AI and reportedly testing a ChatGPT-like chatbot called ‘Apprentice Bard’ based on Google’s LaMDA language model. (Yes, the same one that an ex-Google employee claimed was sentient.)

Adding to that, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said on a recent earnings call that Google was preparing to let people “interact directly” with its newest language models “as a companion to search.”

Meanwhile, Microsoft has also been in the news for its massive investments in OpenAI and reported plans to integrate ChatGPT into various products, like Bing search. More recently, Microsoft revealed its Teams Premium service with AI capabilities powered by the GPT-3.5 language model — the same one used by ChatGPT.

It’ll be interesting to see how Google responds to all this, though it seems we may learn that sooner rather than later. Moreover, Android Police suggested Google was pushing its internal teams tasked with overseeing fairness and ethics in AI to approve projects faster, which could have significant drawbacks if AI projects aren’t properly vetted before the public gets access to them.

Source: Google Via: Android Police

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Mobile Syrup

Google updates mobile search results, adds new ‘Sponsored’ tag

Google is rolling out yet another design refresh for mobile search results. However, this time around, the company is putting a larger ‘Sponsored’ tag on paid results, ditching the ‘Ad’ tag that’s been on results for a long time.

The new ‘Sponsored’ tag is larger and displayed more prominently, which should help people tell apart paid and unpaid search results. The tag appears above the paid result in bold font.

GIF credit: Google

As pointed out by other publications, including The Verge and TechCrunch, the change appears to be something of a course correction for Google. The search giant was widely criticized for changes to how it displays paid search results that some said made it difficult to spot paid results.

Those interested in seeing how Google’s paid results have changed over the years should check out the tweet below from the company’s Ads liaison, Ginny Marvin:

Along with the changes to paid search results, Google is updating how results look on mobile. First, each result now lists the website’s name first, and the favicon is larger and easier to see. These changes aren’t huge, but hopefully should make search results easier to read.

Finally, Google says it plans to test a similar experience for desktop search results “soon.”

You can learn more about Google’s search results updates here.

Source: Google Via: The Verge, TechCrunch

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Mobile Syrup

Google may expand Pixel Launcher search to include screenshots, widgets

Google is working on ways to improve the excellent new search features in the Pixel Launcher with capabilities like widget search and more.

The changes were spotted by Esper’s Mishaal Rahman (via Android Police). Rahman was able to enable hidden flags in the Android 13 Developer Preview 2 Pixel Launcher to turn on the new search capabilities.

With the capabilities, Pixel Launcher’s search can pull up widgets, screenshots stored in Google Photos, and display Google search suggestions.

Android Police notes that the screenshot results were rumoured to roll out late last year, but the rumoured release never happened.

Overall, the improvements look welcome — as things currently stand, finding widgets on your Pixel can be cumbersome. Finding screenshots this way seems neat, although I’m not sure how often I’ll need to quickly pull up screenshots from my app drawer.

As for adding Google Search suggestions, that’s mostly meaningless to me since I hardly use Google Search, but as long as it doesn’t bog down the Pixel Launcher search bar, I don’t mind the addition.

With the launch of Android 12, Google added a whole new system search to the app drawer in the Pixel Launcher. Powered by the ‘Android System Intelligence’ app, the system search is blazing fast and a great way to quickly find apps and, sometimes, the content within apps. For example, I often use the app drawer search bar to look up settings and jump straight to the one I want instead of scrolling around in the Settings app.

Unfortunately, these changes don’t appear to fix my biggest pet peeve with the Pixel Launcher: the Google Search bar pinned to the bottom of the home screen. There’s nothing wrong with the search bar per se, but I hate that it’s specifically a Google search and not the much-improved (and way more useful) system search.

Source: Mishaal Rahman (Twitter) Via: Android Police

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Mobile Syrup

You can now search your Twitter DMs for keywords

Twitter is making it easier for users to search for specific messages in their inboxes.

The social media giant announced users can now use the search bar in their inbox to search for messages using specific keywords and names.

Searching using a specific name or keyword brings up people, groups, and direct messages that match the search.

The feature is available on iOS, Android, and the web.

A comment on Twitter’s support page indicates web users who can’t use the feature at this time will be able to soon as the feature continues to roll out.

Source: @TwitterSupport

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Mobile Syrup

Google will bring MUM-based search enhancements to Lens

Back at Google I/O 2021, the search giant detailed ‘Multitask Unified Model,’ or MUM. The company billed it as an advancement in artificial intelligence that was much better at understanding language.

Google primarily talked about MUM as a way to enhance answers to search queries by better understanding difficult questions. Now, Google is bringing those enhancements to another search product: Lens.

One of the primary benefits of MUM is that it can understand information across a variety of formats, like text, images and video. By integrating MUM in Lens, Google says it’s opening a new way to search by letting users blend visuals and text-based queries to get better results.

The company shared a few examples of how this could work. One example was clothes shopping — if the customer saw a pattern they liked on a skirt but wanted the same design on socks instead, they could use Lens to search for that. Google says the feature will launch on Lens “in the coming months.”

New search experiences focus on expanding topics and visual results

Next up, the company detailed a redesigned search experience coming to Google Search. Three new components are coming as part of this redesign.

First is ‘Things to know,’ which will offer expanded search suggestions based on broad topics. For example, searching for something like ‘acrylic painting’ can surface other “deeper insights” about the topic, like ‘how to make acrylic paintings with household items.’ Google pitched it as a way for users to dive deeper into search topics.

Next is ‘Refine this search’ and ‘Broaden this search.’ Working as two sides of the same coin feature, refine and broaden are another way of helping users explore a topic. For example, if users look up a really broad topic, ‘Refine’ can suggest more narrow searches to help users zoom in on the specific. At the same time, ‘Broaden’ suggests searches that move in the opposite direction — if someone searches a narrow query, Broaden can help them zoom out to get a bigger picture.

Further, Google says it will soon offer a more visual search results page. The new results page will pull various types of results together for users — for example, it can combine text, picture and video results in one place. The new search results page won’t show up for everything, but users will start to see it when searching visual queries.

Things to know will launch in the coming months. So will Refine and Broaden, but it will be limited to English. Visual results will launch in the U.S. first for English users.

Finally, Google plans to introduce MUM to video with a new experience that identifies related topics in a video. Google says this works even if a topic isn’t explicitly mentioned in a video. The feature could be a way to help people dig deeper into video topics.

This will start rolling out on September 29th to English users in the U.S.