Alphabet Inc is working to build a new search engine and add artificial intelligence features to its existing offerings amid rapid advances in the field from competitors such as Microsoft Corp Bing, the New York Times reported on Sunday.
The Mountain View, California-based company and the search engine giant are testing new features under the project name Maggie, the Times reported, and the new product will try to anticipate users’ needs. More than 160 people are working on it, with initial plans to release the features to one million people in the US and scale that up to 30 million by the end of the year.
The newspaper said that planning for the new search engine is still in its early days and there is no timetable on release.
The project comes at a time when Google is facing stiff competition from rival Bing. Samsung Electronics Co. is considering swapping Google for Bing as the primary search engine on its phones due to its AI features, reports the Times. Contract negotiations are ongoing and no decision has been made.
Features can help write software code, for example, and can also display advertisements. Other features discovered by Google include AI image generation and foreign language learning skills.
Large language models and AI are not new to Google. The company is using LLM to predict the intent of users’ queries, Google’s chief business officer said on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call in February. AI also increased interactions with ads, he said.
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