Google's "AI Overviews" from now on in six new countries

Google's parent company, Alphabet, announced Thursday, August 15, that it is bringing its long-awaited search summary UI to an additional six countries around the world. Only two months after the release of the new web functionality and the initial problems, now Google has decided to expand the functionality faster.

Spletni gigant je “AI Overviews” – ki se pojavijo takoj na vrhu iskanja pred tradicionalnimi povezavami do spletnih strani – uporabnikom v ZDA ponudil že maja, pred tem pa je potreboval približno leto dni za testiranje na omejenem številu uporabnikov.

The new feature was met with a wave of criticism when it was released, after users shared unfortunate results when searching for a pizza recipe, or when former US President Barack Obama was labeled a Muslim.

Google reacted fairly quickly and immediately announced the update in May. With this came a clearer restriction on which queries would include UI-generated responses, and Google also removed sites like Reddit from the list of information sources.

In an interview with Reuters, he Hema Budaraja, višja produktna direktorica pri Googlu povedala: “Imam dovolj dokazov, da lahko trdim, da se kvaliteta samo izboljšuje”. In doing so, she pointed to data that Google collects internally, which shows that users with access to the new feature reported a higher level of satisfaction and also spent more time searching with more specific searches compared to users who did not have access.

“AI Overviews” prihajajo v Brazilijo, Indijo, Indonezijo, na Japonsko, v Mehiko in Veliko Britanijo. Novost sta tudi dva lokalna jezika, in sicer portugalščina in hindijščina. Google je spremenil tudi prikaz spletnih strani, ki bodo odslej kot del UI generiranih rezultatov postavljene na desni strani, bo pa na voljo tudi več povezav.

Google je v blogu zapisal še, da interno preverjajo možnost nadaljnjih posodobitev, ki bi povezave prinesla direktno v tekst UI povzetka. To je definitivno v skladu s tem, kar je Google pred časom obljubil, da se bo trudil, da bodo “AI Overviews” spletni promet usmerjale do relevantnih spletnih strani.

Posodobitve prihajajo v času zaskrbljenosti, ki jo medijska industrija, glede možnosti, da bi funkcija iskanja ustvarjena z umetno inteligenc, medijskim podjetjem ukradla promet, izraža že več kot eno leto. Budaraju je dejala, da bo imela nova posodobitev “trosmerno korist” za Google, potrošnike in založnike.