Indian users will be able to test AI-based Google search features from today – The Indian Express
Google has launched its Search with Generative AI experiment for Indian users from Thursday, adding some features that will be unique to the country, which it believes will make search “become simpler and smarter than ever before”.
Users who sign up to test the feature via Search Labs will be able to access it on Chrome and the Google app, even as the Google native search will continue like before. The Search Generative Experience (SGE), which has already been rolled out to users in some markets, will be available in English and Hindi here. Users will be able to toggle between these two languages in states where Hindi is relevant. Other parts of India will see only English. There is also a text-to-speech option being added here considering the large set of new Internet users. Also, a voice search feature will be added soon.
Puneesh Kumar, GM for Google Search, said SGE is “another evolution” of search based on Google’s advancements in generative AI. “By bringing the power of generative AI directly into Google search, it allows entirely new types of questions you never thought search could answer and transforms the way information is organised to help sort through and make sense of what’s out there.” He said this will particularly help new Internet users, who may often get overwhelmed with the amount of information online and hoped they will be “be able to understand a topic faster, uncover new viewpoints or insights and get things done more easily”.
Acknowledging that information quality is an extremely critical aspect here, Kumar said: “With any change we make to search we maintain our high bar for quality to uphold the expectations of billions of users who really trust us. Our work on this new experience is rooted in our ranking systems, and all the expertise that we have developed over the last two decades in understanding information quality in a deep way.”
The safeguards he said have been baked into the product, so much so that it will initially be a “more constrained, less fluid approach” to “make the model more fluid over time”.
Kumar said even as it creates snapshots to answer queries, it will keep the original source at the front for those who wants to read in detail. “One of our priorities was to create approaches that continue to send valuable traffic to a wide range of creators and support a healthy open web.”
Kumar added that search ads will continue to be a native part of this experience. “Ads will appear in dedicated ad slots throughout the page, exactly similar to how they show up today.”
Also, as it does with search, for topics like health or finances that need a high degree of confidence, the generative AI-powered snapshots may not trigger at all, Kumar explained. “So it is not that by default, generative AI will start powering for each and everything,” he told indianexpress.com in response to a query.
Users can opt-in to try SGE out and share feedback directly with the teams working on it by tapping the Labs icon in the Google app or Chrome desktop. While the Chrome desktop option will be available from August 31 in India, for Google App on Android and iOS it will roll out over the coming week.
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Nandagopal Rajan writes on technology, gadgets and everything related. He has worked with the India Today Group and Hindustan Times. He is an alumnus of Calicut University and Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal. … Read More 
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