The annual conference for developers, Google I/O 2023, gave us a whole bunch of new announcements, with one clear, underlying theme: generative AI.
Let’s jump straight into our top 3 key takeaways from Sundar Pichai’s keynote.
1. AI chatbot Bard is available for everyone
The Bard waiting list is no more! One of the big announcements dropped at Google I/O 2023 was that Bard is now open for everyone. But is this announcement a push from Google to try and keep up with its rivals in the generative AI race?
By now, most of us have played around with Open AI’s ChatGPT and have read up on Microsoft Copilot. So unfortunately for Google, they are a little late to the AI party. But could their dominance in the market mean that die-hard Googlers trade their ChatGPT interest for Bard?
Google also dropped some new features for Bard including: support for new languages, ways to export text to Google Docs and Gmail, visual search and dark mode.
They’ve also teased future features like AI image generation and integration with third-party web services like Instacart and OpenTable.
2. Generative AI & Search – a new era?
When ChatGPT launched back at the end of 2022, we knew that this was the start of a new era for AI. The logical next step is for this technology to become part of something we all use every day, search.
We know that generative AI is set to change the way search engines work. Is this update from Google a peek at what the future of search will look like?
Soon (exact date unconfirmed by Google) users will start seeing AI-powered results within their search results. It promises to make every search journey smoother and more powerful, transforming the way information is organised and presented.
3. Perspectives – an SEO nightmare but a user’s dream
The idea that people preference information from other humans over brands is nothing new. We trust other humans more than we trust faceless brands. And social-proof theory is just as relevant in search as it is in real life.
Perspectives, another announcement to come out of Google I/O 2023, is an enhancement to the Google search engine that will tap into this preference for human opinion and knowledge.
We’re sharing some updates we’re making to Search to help you easily get to the human experiences that make the web — and the world — so wonderful.
source: https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-perspectives/
From what we know so far, Perspectives sound like a leap for search and user experience. But could this present a huge headache for SEO? We don’t know the implications for SEO yet, but we’ll be paying close attention to see what Google advises on this.
