Google on Tuesday unveiled its new artificial intelligence model, Gemini 3, which brings significant changes to how the search engine works. It means more artificial intelligence everywhere, including in search results.
Google promises that the new model will improve its existing
AI summaries and AI Mode. Initially, the Gemini 3 will be available to paying
customers in the United States.
Google is adding AI because the company fears that Chat GPT
and similar AI bots will replace it in information search, and now wants to
offer quick answers to everything like them. Google used to be a search engine,
now it's striving to become an answer engine.
This is problematic in many ways. Already now, Google users
in USA are increasingly seeing an artificial intelligence summary at the top of
their search results. Many users are content with this summary instead of going
to research the sources of information themselves.
There are plenty of pitfalls: First, AI can make things up,
or hallucinate. It can give people who ask the same question different answers.
Sometimes an AI summary also claims things that are not actually found on the
page it states as its source.
The summary can even provide dangerous information or
instructions. In August, it emerged that many people had searched Google for
customer service phone numbers for companies and received numbers from AI
summaries that, when called, were the target of a scam attempt. Artificial
intelligence-based search is clearly vulnerable, as scammers who are trying to
phish for money manage to insert fake phone numbers there.
It's also worth noting that AI responses consume more energy
than traditional Google results, and they also reduce website traffic and
revenue.
