Google’s biggest bet is AI for search, investment chief says

By Jeffrey Dastin

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Alphabet, the Google parent that has pioneered self-driving cars and quantum computing, is making its biggest bet much closer to home: online search.

Applying artificial intelligence to the search business that made Google a household name remains the largest gambit for the company, Ruth Porat, Alphabet (NASDAQ:)’s president and chief investment officer, said at the Reuters NEXT conference in New York on Tuesday.

“We’re meeting people where they want to be next,” said Porat, in an interview with Reuters Editor-in-Chief Alessandra Galloni.

Alphabet, which makes much of its over $300 billion in annual revenue from search-related advertising, has injected AI-generated overviews to queries with no obvious answer, in one example of its efforts.

The move followed competition from ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and has required Google to navigate tricky terrain, in which AI sometimes makes up information in what are called “hallucinations.”