Kenya Insights

Tag: AI chatbot

  • AI Chatbot To Be Embedded in Google Search

    AI Chatbot To Be Embedded in Google Search

    Google is introducing a new artificial intelligence (AI) mode that more firmly embeds chatbot capabilities into its search engine, aiming to give users the experience of having a conversation with an expert.

    The “AI Mode” was made available in the US on Tuesday, appearing as an option in Google’s search bar.

    The change, unveiled at the company’s annual developers conference in Mountain View, California, is part of the tech giant’s push to remain competitive against ChatGPT and other AI services, which threaten to erode Google’s dominance of online search.

    The company also announced plans for its own augmented reality glasses and said it planned to offer a subscription AI tool.

    Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google parent Alphabet, said the incorporation of the company’s Gemini chatbot into its search signalled a “new phase of the AI platform shift”.

    “With more advanced reasoning, you can ask AI both longer and more complex queries,” Pichai told the audience.

    The company’s foray into AI-powered glasses comes more than a decade after it pioneered smart glasses with its “Google Glasses”, which ultimately flopped.

    The new Google glasses are being developed with eyeglass retailers Warby Parker and Gentle Monster and will feature a camera, microphone, and speakers.

    With the renewed effort, Google hopes to compete against Meta’s AI-powered glasses made with Ray-Ban.

    The company said it expected to start building the new product later this year.

    Leo Gebbie, principal analyst and director for the Americas at CCS Insight, said Google had been expected to wrap AI more tightly into its products.

    He said he thought the chatbot would help minimise the number of web pages that users must sift through while also allowing people to ask more complicated queries.

    “For the end user, this should mean less time spent browsing the web itself and more time spent talking with Google’s AI tools,” he said.

    Any updates that Google makes to search are “of critical importance”, added Gebbie, since the search business contributes the vast majority of Google’s revenues.

    Google’s attempts to keep up with ChatGPT could fundamentally change the nature of its search engine, which could impact its profits.

    “Google is getting more efficient at answering questions but less efficient at generating clicks – and clicks is how they get paid,” said Cory Johnson, chief market strategist at Epistrophy Capital Research.

    The announcements also come as the company fights a court battle in the US over potential changes to its business after a judge ruled it had a monopoly in search.

    Rocky road

    Google has had mixed success in its recent attempts to incorporate more AI into its services.

    Its AI Overviews feature, unveiled by Google at its developers conference last year, offers AI-generated summaries that currently appear at the top of search results.

    It initially generated ridicule from users who posted some of the odd responses they received, as when it advised one user that non-toxic glue could help make cheese stick to pizza.

    Another widely circulated response stated that geologists recommend humans eat one rock each day.

    A Google spokesperson said at the time that these were “isolated examples”.

    Mr Pichai said on Tuesday that AI Overviews now gets 1.5 billion uses per month in more than 200 countries and territories.

    In its biggest markets – the US and India – AI Overviews drive more than 10% of growth in the types of queries that show them, Pichai said.

    “It’s one of the most successful launches in search in the past decade,” he added.

    (BBC)

  • Woman Chats With Her Dead Mother Using AI

    Woman Chats With Her Dead Mother Using AI

    After her mother’s death, Sirine Malas was desperate for an outlet for her grief. “When you’re weak, you accept anything,” she says.

    The actress was separated from her mother Najah after fleeing Syria, their home country, to move to Germany in 2015. In Berlin, Sirine gave birth to her first child — a daughter called Ischtar — and she wanted more than anything for her mother to meet her. But before they had chance, tragedy struck.

    Najah died unexpectedly from kidney failure in 2018 at the age of 82. “She was a guiding force in my life,” Sirine says of her mother. “She taught me how to love myself.”

    “The whole thing was cruel because it happened suddenly. I really, really wanted her to meet my daughter and I wanted to have that last reunion. The grief was unbearable, says Sirine.

    “You just want any outlet,” she adds. “For all those emotions… if you leave it there, it just starts killing you, it starts choking you. I wanted that last chance (to speak to her).”

    After four years of struggling to process her loss, Sirine turned to Project December, an AI tool that claims to “simulate the dead”.

    Users fill in a short online form with information about the person they’ve lost, including their age, relationship to the user and a quote from the person.

    The responses are then fed into an AI chatbot powered by OpenAI’s GPT2, an early version of the large language model behind ChatGPT. This generates a profile based on the user’s memory of the deceased person.

    Such models are typically trained on a vast array of books, articles and text from all over the internet to generate responses to questions in a manner similar to a word prediction tool. The responses are not based on factual accuracy.

    At a cost of $10 (about Sh1,300), users can message the chatbot for about an hour.

    For Sirine, the results of using the chatbot were “spooky”.

    “There were moments that I felt were very real,” she says. “There were also moments where I thought anyone could have answered that this way.”

    Imitating her mother, the messages from the chatbot referred to Sirine by her pet name – which she had included in the online form – asked if she was eating well, and told her that she was watching her.

    “I am a bit of a spiritual person and I felt that this is a vehicle,” Sirine says.

    Project December has more than 3,000 users, the majority of whom have used it to imitate a deceased loved one in conversation.

    Jason Rohrer, the founder of the service, says users are typically people who have dealt with the sudden loss of a loved one.

    -Sky News