One Tech Tip: Ready to go beyond Google? Here's how to use new generative AI search sites
It's not just you. A lot people think Google searches are getting worse. And the rise of generative AI chatbots is giving people new and different ways to look up information.
While Google has been the one-stop shop for decades — after all, we commonly call searches “googling” — its longtime dominance has attracted a flood of sponsored or spammy links and junk content fueled by “search engine optimization” techniques. That pushes down genuinely useful results.
A recent study by German researchers suggests the quality of results from Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo is indeed declining. Google says its results are of significantly better quality than its rivals, citing measurements by third parties.
Now, chatbots powered by generative artificial intelligence, including from Google itself, are poised to shake up how search works. But they have their own issues: Because the tech is so new, there are concerns about AI chatbots' accuracy and reliability.
Google users don't have to look far. The company last year launched its own AI chatbot assistant, known as Bard, but recently retired that name and replaced it with a similar service, Gemini.
Bard users are now redirected to the Gemini site, which can be accessed directly on desktop or mobile browsers.
The Gemini app also launched in the U.S. this month and is rolling out in Japanese, Korean and English globally — except in Britain, Switzerland and Europe — according to an update notice, which hints that more countries and languages will be “coming soon.”
Google also has been testing out a new search offering, dubbed “Search Generative Experience” that replaces links with an AI-generated snapshot of key info. But it's limited to U.S. users signing up through its experimental Labs site.
Microsoft's Bing search engine has provided generative AI searches powered by OpenAI's ChatGPT technology for about a year, first under the name Bing Chat, now rebranded as Copilot.
On the Bing search home page, click the Chat or Copilot button
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