Google’s AI Search Integration Won’t Change the World Yet – It’s Too Slow

Google’s new artificial intelligence (AI) integration for its search engine has reversed the instant results standard that has become a norm for Google search and is instead too slow to provide responses that it even has animations for waiting.

The SGE Slows Down Search Results

Last month, Google introduced generative AI to its flagship product, the search engine, as an experimental feature called Search Generative Experience (SGE) which is meant to provide users with AI-based summaries of search results.

Essentially, the idea is to prevent users from visiting the multiple links that search results provide by aggregating the relevant information into one response and providing references to the sources used to create the summary.

However, unlike the expectation that AI will outperform the conventional search engine, SGE has proven to be slow to provide the output according to complaints from users who can experiment with it by registering for the waitlist.

From someone that was a first @gmail user and using @Google from the beginning of time ..@searchliaison should not push SGE out the way it is or as the 1st step

Search is simple clean, SGE makes it complex and ugly and slow

Just start out using Google Bard as a tab #AI #SGE

— AI SEO – DIAP Media (@DIAPMedia) May 28, 2023

According to The Verge, the results take too long to appear as a loading animation plays in a blank box that says “Generating…”. This provides an inferior experience for users and beats the purpose for which it was created since the search engine results appear instantly hence users may opt for the traditional routine other than waiting.

Additionally, the SGE is reported to crash several times even with some of the most popular search queries such as “Twitter,” “YouTube,” “Amazon,” “Wordle” and “Roblox”. Instead of a summary, the AI displayed an error message saying “An AI-powered overview is not available for this search.”

For some searches like “Facebook,” “Gmail,” “Apple,” and “Netflix,” on the other hand, the SGE provided relevant and well-formatted responses in good time.

One user speaking to The Verge said:

“When I was testing, the Gmail result showed up fastest, in about two seconds. Netflix’s and Facebook’s took about three and a half seconds, while Apple’s took about five seconds.”

Aside from the crashes, the feature also provides very long responses instead of summaries, which in most cases have irrelevant information. Some of the links are also not as useful and sometimes completely unrelated to the search.

When announcing the SGE, Google stated that the new AI capabilities would aid users in shopping for products. The search engine giant said:

“When searching for a product, you’ll get a snapshot of noteworthy factors to consider and products that fit the bill. You’ll also get product descriptions that include relevant, up-to-date reviews, ratings, prices, and product images.”

On the contrary, an attempt to purchase a video game brought back messy results of enormous sponsored cards above the result and a bizarre list of suggested retail stores that didn’t actually lead to listings of the game.

The SGE also provided a Google Map pinpointing those retail stores, and three-link cards off to the right that should have led to the game’s purchase page but failed to do so.

Google’s Struggles to Catch Up

Google’s entry into AI has been notably slow and the performance of its products is a bit poor compared to similar products from other companies.

This may in part be due to its AI guiding principles since Google believes AI applications should promote social good and prevent the development or reinforcement of unjust bias.

Although these values are great, they might be hindering Google’s development of AI-powered search capabilities.

While Google emphasized that the SGE is still an experiment, it does not compare to ChatGPT when it was at the experiment stage last year in November. Even at that time, the OpenAI chatbot had amazing speeds and provided great and insightful summaries with more relevant information.

Considering the advancements that have taken place since then in the generative AI space even with the tech giant’s own projects, the SGE’s performance is a step backward. All in all, Google promises to continue making improvements based on the feedback users provide hence a better experience can be expected.

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