Search is dead. What comes next may be worse.

GenAI is now integrated in search for greater efficiency, but what does this mean for truth and accuracy?

For over a decade, the way we searched the internet remained largely unchanged, at least from a user perspective. You’d open a browser, type in a search, scroll down and select a web page most suited to your query.

But recently, search engines have integrated AI tools, fundamentally changing both the practice and outcomes of web searches. Instead of a list of web pages, tools such as Google’s AI Overviews aggregate results it deems relevant to your search. This has already had a knock-on effect on click rates for websites. This new search tool poses as an aid to knowledge acquisition. The summaries that are quickly spun up sound accurate, with links to seemingly reputable sources.

The reality is that generative AI is most commonly reserved for only being linguistically useful. Generative models, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs) take a string of words and predict the next most likely word to follow based on its training data.

AI overview summaries have been accused of being wholly inaccurate, reflecting political bias and plagiarizing copy. LLMs don’t use accuracy as a metric, rather taking a linguistic average of content and assuming that the truth lies in quantity.

However, the purposes of tools powered by LLMs have been widely misunderstood and malapplied. ChatGPT is a prime example of this – people trust that, because it is a form of artificial intelligence, it must be able to differentiate between truth and falsehood.

Is there a way to utilize the strong points of generative AI – its ability to aggregate vast amounts of information, simplify it and make it usable – while ensuring it remains truthful and accurate? ecosystem.Ai restricts generative models to truth through Fact Injection – a capability designed for industries where reliability and accuracy are non-negotiable.

Understanding how AI actually works is more vital than ever. Assuming its ‘intelligence’ extends into every possible function is not only flawed, but dangerous.

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