Can AI Permanently Cripple Google?

There is a school of thought that Alphabet’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Google will not be the search engine of the future. However, it dominates the sector worldwide, with several exceptions, including China and Russia. Google might be replaced by ChatGPT, at least among millions of Google’s current users.

The first listing on most Google searches is AI Overview, a new feature showing that Google uses AI to protect its search engine flanks. When asked, “Will ChatGPT replace Google?” The first answer is, “ChatGPT is not likely to replace Google as a search engine because the two technologies have different purposes and capabilities.” One reason is that “ChatGPT may not always produce accurate content.” That begs the question of whether that is true, and if so, can Google’s AI be improved?

However, a Google search on whether AI can replace Google brings back another answer. It is from The New York Times: “Can This A.I.-Powered Search Engine Replace Google? It Has for Me.” The author uses an AI-driven system called “Perplexity.”

What needs to be clarified, and may not be for some time, is whether AI-driven search will develop rapidly improving features and functions. One clear thing is that AI feature improvements come with remarkable rapidity. Forecasting the capabilities, even a few months into the future is almost impossible. Google does give away some features for free.

Google quickly replaced other search engines like Yahoo! during the early 2000s because it was a better product in the eyes of hundreds of millions of users. Alphabet has been smart enough to add AI features to Google search, but in the lightning-paced world of AI, that may not be enough.

The post Can AI Permanently Cripple Google? appeared first on 24/7 Wall St..