Key Takeaways
- AI chatbots are increasingly used as alternatives to traditional search engines.
- One AI founder suggests that the current user experience for AI search might be the best it will ever be, similar to search engines in their early, less commercialized days.
- As these tools grow, they are likely to become cluttered with ads and optimization, potentially degrading the user experience.
- Early signs of this commercialization, like ads in AI-generated search summaries, are already emerging.
Many people are turning to generative AI chatbots when they have a question, bypassing traditional search engines. For this specific use, one AI founder believes these tools might already be at their peak performance.
Lily Clifford, the CEO and founder of Rime Labs, an AI company that develops realistic voices for automated systems, often uses chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini for her information needs. She shared her insights with Business Insider.
Clifford finds the current AI chatbot experience reminiscent of using Google in the late 1990s and early 2000s. She described this earlier period as the prime time for search engine user experience.
“My hot take here is these applications might be the best that they ever will be,” Clifford stated, noting that early search engines were simpler, with fewer ads and less content optimized purely for clicks.
While those developments like SEO became integral to the internet, Clifford argues they’ve made search results worse for users. It’s now common to see multiple sponsored links before the most relevant information.
AI chatbots, for the moment, haven’t undergone this same evolution. People are still exploring their capabilities for various tasks, from drafting emails to generating ad creatives.
For many, like Clifford, asking an AI a question and getting a concise answer is more appealing than sifting through numerous search results. However, it’s important to remember AI-generated answers can sometimes be incorrect or contradictory.
Clifford highlighted the difference during a recent trip to Milan. Using an AI chatbot to find a silk blouse, she was directed to a local seamstress selling custom items via Instagram. “It wasn’t like ‘Go to Forever 21,’ which is probably what would’ve happened if I typed it into Google,” she remarked, calling the experience “totally wild and fun.”
Despite this positive experience, Clifford predicts it’s only a matter of time before AI chatbots follow the path of search engines.
Indeed, companies heavily invested in AI search are already moving in this direction. For instance, Google announced plans last month to incorporate more ads into its AI Overviews at the top of search results. Marketing experts are also now offering services for “answer engine optimization” (AEO).
Clifford believes these trends could make using AI for search more complicated over time. “More and more people pile in and try to do things with it, and then that necessarily makes it complicated,” she explained.
