Google is making waves in the tech industry with its latest innovation. Late last year, the company shocked the world when it unveiled ChatGPT, its own generative AI product. As the development of ChatGPT reached a GPT-4 intelligence level, it became clear that Google was developing its own AI products to keep up with the competition. This year, the company will be taking one step further and launch a brand-new Google Search experience that features a conversational bot similar to ChatGPT.
The new Google Search experience, dubbed “Project Magi”, is designed to provide users with a more personalized experience. It will learn what users want to know and offer customized lists of information, objects to buy and research. Magi will become available to users in the US and will expand to 30 million users by the end of the year.
Acquiring the capability to provide AI-enhanced search results will come with a cost: user privacy. With AI remembering and collecting data about users and the introduction of personalized ads, it is certain how much technology influence Google would have over our data. With such powers, Google could potentially dominate in the ad business.
Google is aware of the responsibility and work that comes with such a powerful AI system, as it has had a few run-ins with data privacy issues in the past. Therefore, when Magi is released, Google will likely have privacy controls in place for users to manage their data.
Combined with the new AI tools Google is working on, the overhauled Google Search could become one of the most powerful search engines on the market. The only downside is if Samsung decides to make Bing the default search engine on Galaxy phones. Bing’s ChatGPT is said to be the key reason as to why they are considering switching.
The possibilities of a powerful AI-enhanced Google search engine sounds both exciting and terrifying. Nonetheless, whether or not Google releases the product with all the right privacy protections in place is yet to be seen.
