GOOGLE IS GIVING ITS DOMINANT SEARCH ENGINE AN ARTIFICIAL-INTELLIGENCE MAKEOVER

Google this week disclosed plans to infuse its dominant search engine with more advanced artificial-intelligence technology, a drive that's in response to one of the biggest threats to its long-established position as the internet's main gateway

The gradual shift in how Google's search engine runs is rolling out three months after Microsoft's Bing search engine started to tap into technology similar to that which powers the artificially intelligent chatbot ChatGPT, which has created one of Silicon Valley's biggest buzzes since Apple released the first iPhone 16 years ago.

Google, which is owned by Alphabet Inc., already has been testing its own conversational chatbot called Bard. That product, powered by technology called generative Al that also fuels ChatGPT, has only been available to people accepted from a waitlist. But Google announced that Bard will be available to all comers in more than 180 countries and more languages beyond English.

Bard's multilingual expansion will begin with Japanese and Korean before adding about 40 more languages.

Now Google is ready to test the Al waters with its search engine, which has been synonymous with finding things on the internet for the past 20 years and serves as the pillar of a digital advertising empire that generated more than $220 billion in revenue last year.

"We are at an exciting inflection point, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai told a packed developers conference in a speech peppered with one Al reference after another. "We are reimagining all our products, including search."

More Al technology will be coming to Google's Gmail with a "Help Me Write" option that will produce lengthy replies to emails in seconds, and a tool for photos called "Magic Editor" that will automatically doctor pictures.

The Al transition will begin cautiously with the search engine that serves as Google's crown jewel.