Google has announced that its new AI-powered chatbot, Bard, will become more widely available to the public in the coming weeks. The announcement comes just as Microsoft is expected to unveil a new version of its search engine, Bing, incorporating ChatGPT, a conversational generative AI, into its system. The new Bing allows users to chat more effectively with their AI-powered answer engine. In fact, it stands by its promise: “Ask real questions. Get complete answers.”
In his recent article, content writer, Joshua Benton, raises concern regarding how news companies will may suffer as AI tools will serve as the go-to platform for people to search. Newsrooms will receive less traffic, fewer ad impressions, and lower revenue as users do not need to visit their sites anymore for information.
Eric Schmidt, the former executive chairman of Google, predicted this shift 12 years ago. He mentioned that there may be a competitor in the market that will allow users to quickly find answers without relying on multiple websites and even Google. Although the developments in AI-powered chatbots and search engines are exciting, the extent to which they will replace traditional web searches has still a long way to go.