Google AI presentations now look more like the OpenAI search prototype

The update is available on desktops and also on mobile devices if you tap the website icons at the top right of the screen.

Hema Budaraju, senior director of product management for Google Search, told Business Insider that the update will make it easier to visit sites that interest them.

Google released AI Overviews in May at its annual I/O conference. The tool provides a summarized version of Google Search results at the top of the page for some queries. While the previous version included links in its answers, they were less front and center. In the past, you had to click a down arrow at the bottom of a paragraph to see sources.

The changes make Google’s AI search product more similar to OpenAI’s SearchGPT, which also offers in-text links and an expandable sources sidebar. Produced by the GPT-4 family, SearchGPT answers queries with up-to-date information from the web. The tool is in testing and available to a small group of users and publishers, according to the company’s announcement.

However, Google AI Overviews is much more widely available, and there are still some key differences between the two. Unlike AI Overviews, SearchGPT is set up as a chatbot, so you can ask it follow-up questions in chat instead of doing a new search. OpenAI also shared plans to integrate the best features of SearchGPT directly into the ChatGPT.

Meanwhile, Google is incorporating AI into its already established search engine. Google also offers a chatbot experience with its Gemini virtual assistant.

The two companies also differ in their approach to deals with publishers. OpenAI has signed a number of deals with news publications, exchanging financial compensation for the ability to train AI on their content library.

The deals come amid concerns from publishers about the impact AI products could have on their readers, as well as any removal of their online work without permission to train the large language models that power the AI ​​products. AI-powered answer engine Perplexity has faced backlash, for example, when it was accused of regurgitating news content without giving attribution to publishers.

While Google appears to be taking steps to expand attribution, it hasn’t taken the same approach in signing contracts with US publishers. However, Google pays Reddit for the ability to train its AI on the company’s vast trove of online posts. The tech giant also announced in 2023 that it had signed licensing deals with 1,500 news publications in the EU thanks to the EU Copyright Directive.

But as companies continue to experiment with what makes a strong AI generative search product, editors have watched how the concept of linking to cited information is being implemented. And from a user perspective, AI models are known to hallucinate, so products that reveal where the AI ​​gets its information can be useful for fact-checking purposes or to further explore a topic.

Budaraju said in a statement that Google will continue to test different ways of presenting information while “prioritizing approaches that drive traffic to relevant websites.”

“Displaying links to support web pages directly within AI Presentations drives more traffic to publisher sites,” Budaraju said in a statement about the experiment.

Google’s update to AI Overviews comes as it launches AI Overviews in six new countries, including the UK, India, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico and Brazil. The updated version with links is available in all countries where it is released, as well as for Search Labs users in more than 120 countries and territories.

Google is also experimenting with new tools in its search labs for US English queries, such as the ability to save AI Overview results and simplify the language in responses.