Google's AI-Powered Search Will Help You Find Things Faster, Experts Say

Get ready for artificial intelligence (AI) to give your web searches a speed boost. 

Google's AI-enhanced search functionality will soon be able to provide summaries for articles you're browsing online. It's one of a growing number of ways that AI is transforming internet searches. 

"In an age where information overload is the norm, such tools can streamline vast amounts of data, making it more digestible and accessible for all," Rohan Kalahasty, the CEO of the AI company Vytal told Lifewire in an email interview. "Furthermore, people with busy schedules will be able to understand the significant points of new stories without being forced to give up too much of their time."

More AI Punch for Your Search

The recently introduced Search Generative Experience (SGE) feature will be able to condense articles you peruse on the internet. SGE can already summarize search results, saving you from endless scrolling to locate your desired information. The new addition aims to help you navigate to a link.

"SGE while browsing" was specifically designed to help people more deeply engage with long-form content from publishers and creators, and make it easier to find what you're looking for while browsing the web," Google wrote in a blog post. "On some web pages you visit, you can tap to see an AI-generated list of the key points an article covers, with links that will take you straight to what you're looking for directly on the page."

The new "SGE while browsing" feature will allow users to get AI-generated key points of a given article in a pop-up sidebar that can be activator through Chrome, Chris Rodgers, the CEO of Colorado SEO Pros, said in an email.

"It provides some key points that could enable users to save time scanning docs for details, almost like getting a sort of bulleted "cliff notes" for a given article," he added. 

One way to think of summarized articles is as an iteration of Google's Featured Snippets, which pulls the most relevant parts of a website and showcases it at the top of search results, Adam Dorfman, VP of Product at Reputation, noted via email.

"Users will benefit from this by getting news insights and other information more conveniently and faster in real-time, which will save time and effort," he said. "For example, if a user follows breaking news—say a weather event—they will conceivably get essential content in a more efficient manner to help them make faster decisions."

Google's SGE isn't the only game in town when it comes to AI search summaries. ChatGPT can summarize articles but is not directly built into a browser like the Google SGE feature, Rodgers noted. Bing's AI Copilot can also summarize articles or provide key points by using the chat feature in the Edge browser and specifically requesting it.

The new Google "feature is actually very similar to Twitter/X, and it could compete with the platform, as it may make Google a more openly available source of breaking news—but instead of news being haphazardly shared in your Twitter/X stream, Google organizes it for you," Dorfman said.

Too Many Summaries?

As handy as the new SGE feature, it could have some downsides. Rodgers noted that AI summaries could miss important information.  

"Accuracy will need to be vetted out over time to fully rely on this feature," he added. "Is it beneficial enough to actually garner widespread usage instead of scrolling and scanning the page? Only time will tell, this feature seems like it would be more useful for long-form articles and web pages with lots of content."

To understand and authenticate the truthfulness of articles, you often need to look into the fine details, Kalahasty pointed out. 

"This is especially important to consider for articles on debated topics," he added. "Pieces that naturally invite rigorous debate and examination risk being oversimplified when distilled into a summary."

King was even more blunt in his assessment of AI search summaries. 

"I don't think that we need more dumbing down of the web," he said. "The attention span problem we have on the Internet is not making us any smarter as a species. Tiktokifying written information poorly is not our best move."