Google’s annual conference, I/O, has come to a close, with top executives gathering for a global media interview. Attendees included Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, Elizabeth Reid, Vice President and General Manager of Google Search, James Manyika, Senior Vice President of Google Research, Technology, and Society, and Koray Kavukcuoglu, Chief Technology Officer of Google Deepmind. These individuals play important roles in leading AI development.
In the face of strong competition from OpenAI and other rivals, Google emphasized its long-term investments and the influence of its hundreds of millions of users. Regarding concerns about the impact of the AI features launched by the search engine on website traffic, Google expressed confidence in maintaining a balance. “Digital Times” had the opportunity to witness Google’s top executives answering questions from various sectors of interest.
Regarding competition: How does Google view OpenAI’s persistent challenge and “responsibly” slowing down?
The AI battle between tech giants continues to heat up, with Microsoft’s OpenAI even releasing GPT-4o, a multimodal capability, the day before Google’s annual conference, I/O. In response, Pichai stated, “We are glad to see innovations from other companies, which benefits everyone. So, I am as excited as you are. It has been an exciting week in the tech industry.”
However, he went on to mention that events happening in the tech industry today may become less important over time. “Our long-term focus has been on continuous investment and model development, striving to improve the lives of billions of people. This is Google’s North Star.” This suggests that Google is not focused on current competition but rather on a larger scale.
The competition between Google and OpenAI has been ongoing since the end of 2022, with both companies releasing new products at similar times. Recently, The New York Times pointed out that OpenAI’s audio-visual model, Sora, has been trained using over one million hours of YouTube videos. When asked about this controversy in an interview with CNBC on the 14th, Pichai simply responded, “I think that’s a question they need to answer. Typically, when these things happen, we make sure they understand our terms of service, and we address the issue.”
In addition to external challenges, the media also questioned Google’s competitiveness. It was noted that Google has prioritized being “responsible” and reducing AI hallucinations from last year to this year. However, in the fiercely competitive field of AI, how can Google ensure it does not fall behind?
“We want to be bold but must make choices,” emphasized Pichai. He stated that being responsible is not just about regulations but also drives innovation. For example, Google is investing in tools that benefit humanity, such as flood forecasting, medical expertise models, and inclusive design. These developments will go hand in hand with Google’s AI advancements.
Regarding the search engine: Will AI summaries reduce website traffic?
Google officially launched the AI Overview feature in its search engine this year, which uses AI to search for and summarize content at the top of the page for users. Concerns have been raised about the potential impact on advertising effectiveness and the traffic of creators and publishers. Research firm Gartner predicts that due to increased reliance on AI overall, internet traffic in search engines will decrease by 25% by 2026.
Paul Roetzer, CEO of the Marketing AI Institute, believes that this will undoubtedly have a negative impact on websites that rely on organic search traffic. “Marketers have no choice but to continue doing what they are doing and try to attract attention beyond Google search.”
In response, Elizabeth emphasized that AI-assisted summaries and traffic are not a “zero-sum game.” In fact, during their testing process, they found that the websites displayed in AI Overviews experienced an increase in traffic. “People often assume that the number of questions in the world is fixed, but in reality, when people search for a question and are curious about the answer, they continue to explore further.”
Pichai also added that Google had already introduced the “Featured Snippets” feature in 2014, which displays search results at the top of the page in large fonts. At the time, it faced criticism but, over time, it has been proven that website traffic increased. This indicates their confidence in maintaining this balance.
Regarding goals: Making AI understand the world more like humans
The field of AI is constantly evolving, and the media at the event asked about future prospects, focusing on what will happen in the next 12 months. In response, Kavukcuoglu stated that Google’s core mission in the coming year is to make AI engage in more human-like and complex reasoning.
“We are currently in a phase where generative models can create new ideas and make hypotheses, but reasoning through these things is a more challenging task.” Kavukcuoglu pointed out that Google wants people to be able to interact with these models and even have technology act as their “agents” to truly execute tasks. However, all of these things require AI to have a comprehensive understanding of the entire context and the world as seen by the user.
The direction Google is heading can be seen through the recently introduced smart assistant, Astra. When Astra uses its camera, it sees the same view as the user and can think and respond in real-time, as if it is experiencing the world together. This is an important step in Google’s development.
Editor: Li Xiantai