Google’s AI-powered search feature, SGE (Search Generative Experience), is gaining some new skills, starting today. The AI feature, which introduces a conversational mode in search is now going to be able to generate images using prompts directly in SGE similar to rival Bing's support of OpenAI's DALLE_E 3. In addition, SGE will now allow users to write drafts within SGE where you can customize the output to be longer or shorter or change the tone of the writing to be more serious or casual.
The new features come on the heels of a series of rapid-fire updates to SGE as the pace of AI technology development quickens. Over the past few months, SGE has already gained new capabilities to do things like write AI-powered summaries and create definitions of unfamiliar terms, in addition to gaining coding improvements, plus travel and product search features, among other things.
With the new AI image generation feature, you can enter a prompt specifying what sort of image you want, like a drawing, photo or painting, for example. SGE will return four results directly in the SGE conversational experience. From there, you tap on the images, which can be downloaded as .png files, or edit the prompt that created the images to generate a new set. Under the hood, the feature is powered by Google’s Imagen text-to-image model.
The same feature will also become available when you use Google Image
search. As you scroll through the image search results, if you don’t find the
photo you need, you’ll be able to create a new image using prompts from a box
that appears within the results.
Because AI image generation has already led to some inappropriate content, Google is limiting its new image generation feature to users 18 and older even though SGE recently opened up to teens in the U.S, ages 13-17.
It’s also thinking about how it can introduce this technology in a
responsible way, which means it’s added some fairly strict filtering policies
in the product. These filters intend to prevent the creation of images that can
be “harmful, misleading, or explicit,” Google says, or those that otherwise
violate its prohibited use policies for generative AI. It’s also blocking the
creation of any images that contain photorealistic faces and prompts that
mention the names of notable people — blocks intended not only to prevent
inappropriate content but also to prevent the spread of misinformation.
Of course, people are fairly clever when it comes to
messing around with AI image generation tools to create obscene and otherwise
crazy outputs, as was seen earlier this month when both Meta and Bing's AI image generation tools went viral for how they were being
misused to create inappropriate or shocking images, despite the policies the companies had in place.
Google admits that its tools also may not be perfect —
that’s why they’re still opt-in, for starters, through Google Search Labs.They’ll also contain a feedback mechanism so users can
report when the technology misfires or is misused. Still, the company thinks
it’s done a fairly good job with the implementation of its filters and believes
that people might even encounter more blocks than they would suspect. (Sounds
like a challenge!)
The images will also contain metadata embedded in the
files that identifies them as AI-generated as well as embedded watermarking
that’s invisible to the human eye. This is powered by SynthID, which Google
Cloud and Google DeepMind announced at the end of August.
The other new feature builds on SGE’s ability to serve as a writing assistant. Already, SGE could provide a written draft — something Google integrated with the idea that users may want to write an email to the companies whose ads or links they found through Search. But now this draft writing feature can output different types of writing, either longer or shorter, or changing the tone to be more serious or more casual.
With both of the new features — alternate drafts and image generation —
export options will also be available through SGE. In the case of the former,
you can export your writing to Google Workspace apps, like Gmail or Google
Docs. The images you generate, meanwhile, can be saved to Google Drive.
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