For the past twenty-five years, the internet and the growth and influence of social media have dominated most people’s lives.
AI > WEB 2.0?
Is it possible we are moving towards a future where AI replaces the web and the internet? A world where the enjoyment of searching is flattened, and the pleasure of finding new information is reduced to an information sheet scraped from the contents of the web?
The baby boomer generation, including many of our parents, grew up when knowledge was primarily sourced from hardcover encyclopedias, most commonly the Britannica Encyclopedia. In their commitment to their children's education, parents would set aside part of their wages to invest in these encyclopedias. They served as a source of knowledge, and a subtle status symbol proudly displayed in the formal living area.
Then, in 1991, a new era dawned with the introduction of the World Wide Web. This was not just a technological advancement but a transformative shift in how we acquire knowledge. While the web had existed previously, it went online that year, opening up a world of information and possibilities through hyperlinked documents, forever changing how we learn and explore.
As the web gained popularity and ease of use, encyclopaedias were relegated to back rooms, while dial-up modems became the new status symbol and source of knowledge. For the past twenty-five years, the internet and the growth and influence of social media have dominated most people’s lives.
Now, a year after announcing Google SGE (Search Generative Experience) and Gemini at its May 2023 I/O Conference as the next biggest thing, at the recent 2024 Developers I/O Conference, Google announced plans to replace the web with AI.
The past eighteen months have been turbulent in the AI landscape, not only in terms of the growth of AI and its increased capacity but also as companies have sought to outdo each other to claim primacy in the AI area.
Growth of AI
2023, the year of companies jockeying for position
2023 marked a pivotal year in the evolution of AI for many reasons.
In March, OpenAI launched its ChatGPT 4. This is a powerful language model that expanded the capabilities of AI in natural language processing.
On March 30, a group of AI experts called for a six-month pause in developing AI systems as the power of AI was becoming evident. They were concerned about AI's growth and the lack of time to consider its implications carefully.
In June, AI was able to understand and decode whale language, demonstrating the versatility of AI applications in understanding complex language systems.
ChatGPT went multimodal in September, which meant it had the integrating capability to process voice and images, which broadened the scope of AI interactions.
In December, Google DeepMind revealed Gemini, a further significant development in AI. Gemini is significant for several reasons:
● Gemini, unlike its predecessors, is a multimodal large language model that integrates various forms of information, such as text, audio, video, and images. This allows for more complex and nuanced interactions with AI.
● Gemini comes in three sizes – Gemini Ultra, Gemini Pro and Gemini Nano. Each is optimised for different scales and types of tasks. For example, Gemini Nano is tailored for on-device applications.
● The design of Gemini was meant to be a game changer in terms of its processing power and ability to integrate information across multiple formats.
Hence, despite the call for a six-month moratorium on AI development, 2023 saw AI's rapid growth and development in its processing power and the complexity of tasks it could complete.
2024 – Google announces its death warrant, or has it
At the 2024 Google I/O annual Developer conference, Google announced plans to replace the web with AI. What does this mean, and has Google effectively given notice of its demise?
What does Google mean
Currently, Google acts as the middleman, connecting our searches with the websites we want to find. In exchange for this service, we accept advertising and our activity being tracked. Google proposes that instead of directing us to web pages, it will use AI to collate all the information from them and provide us with a response using AI.
The challenges of doing this
Google’s plan has several challenges.
Impact on the ecosystem of the web.
If instead of directing search traffic to all the web pages it indexes, Google uses the content of these pages to feed its AI, it means Impact on Google’s bottom line.
As indicated in a previous article, search ads drive Google’s revenue. The company's total ad revenue comprises 77.8% of its overall revenue. Google's announcement appears to threaten its viability because why would businesses pay for search ads when people are no longer searching?
Google’s response to concerns about these impacts
Google maintains that AI search will not always be used. For example, navigational queries to specific websites or short answers to quick questions will still be responded to using traditional non-AI search results, i.e., the ranked list of currently used links. However, the AI search function will be used for more complex searches, pulling information from several websites and Google databases.
In response to the claim that users will not link out to other websites, Google maintains their tests indicate that users are more likely to link out to the websites to find further information. However, Google did acknowledge this concern in a press release:
“As we expand this experience, we’ll continue to focus on sending valuable traffic to publishers and creators,”.
Whatever Google may say to lessen concern among businesses, bloggers, news outlets, and other companies that advertise on Google, it is clear that Google intends to replace web searches with AI in some form eventually.
However, besides the impact on web ecosystems and the potential loss of revenue for Google, other challenges remain with using AI.
Despite the call for a six-month moratorium on AI development, 2023 saw AI's rapid growth and development in its processing power and the complexity of tasks it could complete.
Impact on people’s trust when AI hallucinates
Despite the enthusiasm and promise of AI to provide reliable and accurate information, the reality is that it continues to glitch and hallucinate.
Recent examples include Google's suggestion to mix about 1/8 cup of Elmer’s glue with the pizza sauce to prevent the cheese from sliding off.
Even at the recent 2024 I/O Conference, AI suggested opening the back door of a camera and removing the film if it was jammed. This answer, if followed, would completely ruin the photos.
In fairness to Google, they are not the only company grappling with AI hallucinations and mistakes. OpenAI, Meta, and Perplexity are all dealing with the issue. The problem is that Google is the first to use this technology on a large scale, which is why the errors keep cropping up.
Companies developing AI need to address glitches to provide confidence and assurance to users of their products; otherwise, people will be reluctant to trust AI's responses.
Questions around copyright and permission
The recent example of OpenAI creating a voice that sounded like Scarlett Johansson when she had declined the request to be the voice behind ChatGPT raises the question of the power of AI companies to override permission and copyright.
Google was hit with a wide-ranging lawsuit alleging it scraped data from millions of users without their consent and violated copyright laws to train and develop its AI.
These grey areas have not yet been resolved despite the demand in 2023 for a six-month moratorium. The earlier call for careful consideration of AI's impact has been lost in the race for profits and the hubristic desire to have the most powerful AI program.
Are we facing a world without the web
Like many things in business, it depends.
Growth and Controversy
There has been considerable growth within the AI sector over the past two years. However, this has not been without controversy. In November 2023, Sam Altman was fired and reinstated as CEO of OpenAI; however, the turmoil at OpenAI has continued, with cofounder IIya Sutskever leaving along with a host of other top-level employees.
As mentioned above, Google is facing a lawsuit for scraping data without consent. It is also involved in an anti-trust lawsuit. It is the most significant US antitrust case in a quarter century. Google is fighting to protect its stranglehold on around 90 per cent of the global internet search business.
OpenAI and Google are trying to secure their position as leaders in the field. However, lawsuits and losing critical staff can disrupt the plans for dominance. Already, some competitors are making an impact, for example Perplexity AI.
Perplexity AI is similar to the direction Google is attempting to take with Gemini AI, but it has a different implementation approach. It is free to use and aims to be a starting point for knowledge, providing trusted answers to any question.
Predictions
Gartner predicts that by 2026, traditional search engine volume will decrease by 25%, with search marketing losing market share to AI chatbots and Generative AI solutions.
A veteran tech journalist, Ian Betteridge, stated on Mastodon that “if you are in publisher SEO and the Google IO demos aren’t making you consider a new career, you’re probably not paying attention”.
While these predictions may be grim, they do not factor in human creativity and inventiveness to adapt to the challenges and create opportunities.
Preparing for the future
Despite the predictions of AI's impact, the basics will remain constant.
● Businesses, both for-profit and not-for-profit, will need to focus on producing unique content that is useful to customers and potential customers.
● Content will still need to demonstrate the quality-rater elements of expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
We may be on the cusp of the next evolution, where the web is superseded by AI and large-scale language models that answer queries on one page. However, there remains the X factor, the loss of staff, lawsuits, the emergence of competitors with different models, and glitches within the system that produce hallucinations.
Whatever the future, now is the time for organisations to revisit their marketing and content to ensure they are helpful and have the quality rater elements that will enable them to adapt and survive the coming changes.
