Shares of Alphabet, Google's parent company, dropped over 3% in early trading on Monday, following concerns that its core search engine could lose market share to AI-powered rivals such as Microsoft's Bing. Reports suggest that Samsung was considering making Bing the default search engine on its devices rather than Google's, prompting panic within the company. To address the heightened competition, Google is developing a new AI-powered search engine called Project "Magi," which aims to change the way results appear in Google Search and will include an AI chat tool available to answer questions. The project is expected to be unveiled to the public next month.
Google has been using AI for years to improve the quality of its results and offer entirely new ways to search, including with a feature rolled out last year that lets users search by combining images and words. Google spokesperson Lara Levin said the company is excited about bringing new AI-powered features to Search and will share more details soon.
Google's search engine has dominated the market for two decades, but the viral success of ChatGPT, a tool that can generate compelling written responses to user prompts, has put Google on defense for the first time in years. In March, Google began opening up access to Bard, its new AI chatbot tool that directly competes with ChatGPT.
Microsoft has invested in and partnered with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, to deploy similar technology in Bing and other productivity tools. Other tech companies, including Meta, Baidu, and IBM, as well as a slew of startups, are racing to develop and deploy AI-powered tools. However, tech companies face risks in embracing this technology, which is known to make mistakes and "hallucinate" responses, particularly when it comes to search engines, a product that many use to find accurate and reliable information.
In an interview with 60 Minutes, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai stressed the need for companies to be responsible in each step along the way as they build and release AI tools. He also expressed his belief that these AI tools will ultimately have broad impacts on businesses, professions, and society.