What will generative AI in Google search look like?
For questions with no single correct answer (which Google has termed “No One Right Answer,” or NORA, queries), the company’s search engine will soon provide multi-sentence responses, exploring and explaining some of the many possibilities. These longform AI blurbs will appear in a box at the top of search, similar to where definitions for words or math solutions might appear now.
Using a pre-recorded demo, Google exec Prabhakar Raghavan shared an example about stargazing. Offered the query, “What are the best constellations to look for when stargazing?” Google’s generative AI spit out a bullet-pointed list of nuanced responses. It mentioned Orion, Cassiopeia, and other star formations notable for different reasons—their brightness, their shape, and so on.
On top of providing the initial text response, the search results for the stargazing query included a few suggested follow-up questions; also presumably AI-generated. These included, “What is the best time of year to see these constellations.” And, in response to that follow-up, the search engine offered a whole new list of bullet-pointed information which appeared to draw on knowledge of the previous answer. To the second query, Google didn’t just give the best time of year to see any old constellation—it offered descriptions specific to Orion, Cassiopeia, and the others it had first listed.
