AI Overviews- Google's Newest Decoction

And no, we are not kidding! If you’re intrigued and don’t know what AI Overviews is or have been wanting to know more, this article is for you.

AI Overviews is a feature that generates AI summaries to user questions before showing them any external website links. Gemini, which is Google’s AI chatbot does the work of scouting all the information available on the web and to quote Google, ‘gives the most trusted answers in the fastest and shortest way’. This feature, announced at Google’s annual I/O Conference, is only available in the USA presently but will be rolled out in other countries soon. So, what does it mean for you?

→ Impact on Individuals

On the positive side, these summaries mean that you will no longer have to spend hours searching through innumerable websites to find precise answers. The exploitation of SEO tools by sites to show up first will also decrease as AI will provide you with a reliable answer after looking through multiple sources.

However, this feature also comes with many drawbacks. It implicitly means that users will first see the information that Google wants them to, reducing the scope to analyze different sources and viewpoints. Also, like any other AI system, there is a risk of the questions being entirely misinterpreted and answers being completely inaccurate.

→ Impact on Businesses

Once you understand how AI Overviews work, its not difficult to see that user traffic on published websites will fall, which translates into a loss of ad revenues for them. Reports suggest that independent publishers might end up taking the largest hit as Google could continue to promote only large business houses where it has vested interests, through its AI summaries. Given the market power that Google commands in the web search domain, the effects of this- could be massive.

Given these considerations, AI Overviews has gotten off to a rocky start. Can it be a success in the future and redefine web searching?

Stay tuned with AI For You, to find out.

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