Have No Fear, Google Has Plans to Enshittify AI Search With Ads, Too (Gizmodo) [View all]

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https://gizmodo.com/have-no-fear-google-has-plans-to-enshittify-ai-search-with-ads-too-2000680278

Google’s AI Overview has somehow successfully managed to get people to be less engaged with search results, clicking through less often, and less likely to fact-check the information presented to them. So you know what that means: it’s time to monetize! According to a report from Search Engine Land, Google is planning to introduce advertisements inside its AI experiences.

Per the report, Google Vice President of Search, Robbie Stein, said that he doesn’t see advertisements going away any time soon, and in fact expects that they will evolve to integrate into AI tools. Stein said the company has already “started some experiments on ads within AI Mode and within Google AI experiences,” and expects that “new and novel ad formats” will be introduced in the future so advertisers can continue to target users and give Google money for the right to do so.

What are those “new and novel” formats, exactly? Stein floated one example of a person searching for information during a home remodel, in which a person could provide information to the AI-powered search, and it “could give even more fine-tuned recommendations or potential other services that you could consider, or deals that could be more useful to you.” So like…personalized and sponsored advertisements, but spit out by AI, apparently? It’s not entirely clear what is novel about that, other than the fact that the person searching will likely be less discerning about what sort of paid placements they are being exposed to. Of course, there’s always the possibility that your favored chatbot will collect even more detailed data about you, but that’s not really an innovation on the ad side of things.

For now, the company insists that it’s focused on building “consumer products first and foremost,” but is obviously thinking about how to turn a profit on this thing that it has invested billions of dollars into developing. Stein also claimed that, for the time being, AI recommendations include “organic” results first and aren’t driven by ad inputs. Keep tabs on that to see how long that lasts.

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