As AI and large language models continue to evolve, companies are racing to implement their capabilities into as many of their products as possible. Most obviously, tech giants such as Google and Microsoft are developing various AI tools to integrate them into their search engines. While it may seem only logical that an AI chatbot would be perfect for search engines, there may be an issue when it comes to revenue generation and the availability of online content.
Search engines exist so that people can find accurate answers as fast as possible. While AI can provide this functionality, it removes the tedious search process that pays the websites who in turn pay the search engine.
Search engines have traditionally used advertisements to monetize their services. Somewhat controversially, they monitor search queries and browsing habits to produce personalized ads that will hopefully result in purchases. Additionally, some companies can pay to have their websites showcased higher up on search results. Some websites that are indexed by search engines earn money by showcasing ads users will view from clicking on their links from the search engine. Other websites may simply sell products or offer paid services to generate revenue.
If AI was to completely replace search engines, it could disturb all of these parties’ business models. Instead of scrolling through links, users would immediately get their answer in a summary format and leave. It would become pointless for companies to pay the search engine to highlight their website because users no longer need to click it to find the answer they’re looking for. While this would cost search engines revenue, it’s harmful for the websites as well. Websites would lose traffic, and it would put their ad revenue at risk, in turn preventing them from producing further content.
Ironically, AI relies on the very content that it would inadvertently endanger. Large language models are trained on various pieces of information pulled from the internet. If it took away its source of revenue, then it would lose its main source of knowledge, preventing it from further learning and evolving. The better the AI is at providing direct results, the more exacerbated this problem would be.
This begs the question of how search engines will circumvent this, as they’ve already begun AI integration. It could lead to innovative advertising methods or alternate revenue models entirely.
It’s important to recognize that it’s very unlikely that AI will ever completely replace traditional search engines. Users will always want to explore and delve deeper into topics, which traditional search results can better accommodate than a single direct answer. Most plausibly, AI and traditional search methods would exist alongside each other, with AI serving straightforward queries while search results are used for more complex answers. In this case, content writers would be forced to produce more nuanced, in-depth work that AI couldn’t easily replace. This could lead to a new landscape of the internet, where the vast majority of online content boasts a new level of originality and uniqueness.
In any case, AI is a dynamic and rapidly evolving field, with constant developments and breakthroughs. We will never know the full impact of AI on search engines until much further down the line. For now, AI in search is an exciting space, and we’ll just have to wait and see where it takes us.
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