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Google’s AI-powered search experience expands globally to 120+ countries and territories
Google’s AI-powered search experience is rolling out worldwide, after initial launches in select markets, including the U.S., India and Japan. Starting today, the AI-based conversational experience known as SGE, or Search Generative Experience, will be available in mor than 120 new countries and territories, globally. It will also support four new languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Korean and Indonesian.
These join other supported languages, including English, Hindi and Japanese. In addition, SGE will see other minor improvements, starting in the U.S., in terms of asking follow-up questions and using features like translations and definitions.
Launched earlier this year, SGE is Google’s answer to Bing Chat, the OpenAI-powered AI chatbot experience available through Bing search and Microsoft’s Edge browser. Similar to Bing Chat, SGE lets web users interact with an AI using natural language. Users can ask questions and receive responses that aren’t just a list of links, as Google has historically offered, but are fully formed answers delivered in complete sentences, with references cited.
The experience has been steadily updated with new features following its arrival, excluding AI-powered summaries of paywalled articles, definitions of terms you may not be familiar with in certain subjects (like STEM, economics, history and others), improvements to its coding-related answers, as well as the ability to generate images and write drafts, among other things. It also recently opened up to U.S. teens, ages 13-17.
Today, in addition to the global expansion, Google will begin testing a new way for users to ask follow-up questions directly on the search results page. Now, as you explore a topic, you’ll be able to see your prior questions and search results, including Search ads in dedicated slots throughout the page, Google says. The company is positioning this as an easier way to dive deeper into a topic, but it’s also about making sure its ads business stays relevant in the AI-powered search era.
Image Credits: Google
This update will arrive first in the U.S. in English in the weeks ahead.
Another improvement is coming to SGE’s translation feature. When you ask Search to translate a phrase where some words could have more than one possible meaning, you can tap on those words and pick the meaning that relates to what it is you want to say. This option may also appear when you need to specify the gender for a particular word.
This feature will initially come to U.S. users for English-to-Spanish translations in the weeks ahead, and more countries will be added in the future.
Another small tweak involves the newly added definitions feature that allows users to ask for definitions of unfamiliar words found in answers about select educational topics in their AI-powered overviews. Now, in addition to science, economics and history, you can ask for definitions in areas like coding and health information. When available, these words will be highlighted, so you can hover over them to preview the definition and related images.
This option will arrive over the next month in English in the U.S. with more countries to follow.
“We’re at the beginning of a long arc of innovation, and we’re excited by the progress so far,” Hema Budaraju, Google’s senior director of Product Management for Search, tells TechCrunch. “Now, even more people around the world can use generative AI in Search for everyday help and we look forward to expanding to even more countries in the future.”
For reference, the full list of countries and territories that now have access to SGE includes the following:
American Samoa
Angola
Antigua and Barbuda
Bahamas
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belize
Benin
Bhutan
Bolivia
Botswana
Brazil
Brunei
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cambodia
Cameroon
Cape Verde
Central African Republic
Chad
Chile
Colombia
Comoros
Congo [DRC]
Congo [Republic]
Cook Islands
Costa Rica
Côte d’Ivoire
Dominica
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Eswatini
Ethiopia
Fiji
French Guiana
Gabon
Gambia
Ghana
Grenada
Guadeloupe
Guam
Guatemala
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Indonesia
Jamaica
Kenya
Kiribati
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Lesotho
Liberia
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives
Mali
Marshall Islands
Mauritius
Mexico
Micronesia
Mongolia
Mozambique
Myanmar
Namibia
Nauru
Nepal
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
Niue
Northern Mariana Islands
Pakistan
Palau
Panama
Papua New Guinea
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Puerto Rico
Rwanda
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Samoa
São Tomé and Príncipe
Senegal
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Solomon Islands
Somalia
South Africa
South Korea
South Sudan
Sri Lanka
Suriname
Taiwan
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Thailand
Timor-Leste
Togo
Tokelau
Tonga
Trinidad and Tobago
Turkmenistan
Tuvalu
U.S. Virgin Islands
Uganda
United States Minor Outlying Islands
Uruguay
Uzbekistan
Vanuatu
Venezuela
Vietnam
Western Sahara
Zambia
Zimbabwe
Correction, 11/9/23, 10:14 am et: An earlier version of this story indicated Google’s AI would summarize paywalled articles, it excludes those from the feature.
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