Google is still working to improve its Bard AI chatbot as it seeks to compete with Microsoft's Bing Chat. However, it's also adding generative AI features in its trademark Search service with its experimental Search Labs that was first announced in May as part of Google I/O.
Today, Google announced some updates to its generative AI-powered Search experience (SGE) for people enrolled in the Search Labs program.
Google's blog post reveals the biggest update will let SGE users see images and even video clips for some generative AI search prompts. Google stated:
Sometimes, it’s more powerful to understand something by seeing it — so we recently brought images to even more AI-powered overviews. For example, when you search for something like “tiniest birds of prey,” you’ll quickly be able to reference what the bird looks like and get relevant information from the web. And over the next week, you’ll begin to see videos within some overviews where it’s helpful to see something in motion, such as a demonstration of a yoga pose, or how to get stains out of marble.
Google also revealed that it recently added the dates for when each link was published for SGE results, so users can "better understand how recent the information is from these web pages."
Finally, there's been some backend performance boosts that should be noticeable for SGE users:
We recently made a major improvement that reduces the time it takes to generate AI overviews by half – and we're continually improving so you'll see even faster responses over time.
Again, these new Search features are for people who decide to enroll in the company's Search Labs program. You can sign up for the program now, and when you get accepted you can use the SGE features on the Google app for iOS and Android, along with the Chrome web browser on the desktop.
