When Will ChatGPT Replace Search? Maybe Sooner Than You Think
A recent Aberdeen Strategy & Research survey asked how you think you’ll find internet-based information in the future: AI chatbots beat search engines by a wide margin.
By Peter Tsai
By now, you likely know that ChatGPT and similar AI-powered tools from Google, Microsoft, and others have the potential to alter society in profound ways.
In a matter of seconds, generative AI chatbots and image generators can transform a short text prompt into award-winning images, essays worthy of top marks, blog posts, poetry, and even functioning computer code.
Much has been written about the implications of AI-powered tools performing business tasks that once required hours of human labor. Understandably, much of the debate over AI has centered on the technology putting jobs at risk in fields including content creation, customer service, data entry, and even computer programming. Another big change is coming, though: one that could fundamentally alter how we obtain information and possibly upend the current ad-supported internet paradigm we’re all familiar with.
Is AI a Better Way to Get Answers?
In March 2023, we conducted an Aberdeen Strategy & Research survey of 642 professionals working across a broad range of industries to learn more about the impact of artificial intelligence in the workplace. (Aberdeen Strategy & Research is owned by PCMag’s parent company, Ziff Davis.)
When we asked respondents to predict how they’ll find internet-based information in the future, AI chatbots (42%) bested search engines (24%) by a wide margin.
Not only do users believe they’re more likely to use chatbots for web searches in the future, but many are already utilizing them today.In March 2023, nearly six out of 10 survey respondents had tried generative AI tools. Respondents were almost three times as likely to have tried chatbots (56%) such as ChatGPT than text-to-image tools (20%) such as Dall-E 2 or Midjourney. So while anyone has the power to use AI to generate pictures featuring orange dinosaurs in the style of Van Gogh, not many are doing so (yet).
In our study, 16% of respondents had used AI tools extensively (power users) and 43% had tried them out (casual users). As you might expect, power users skewed younger. Members of the millennial generation and later — those born after 1981 — were more likely (28%) to be power users, compared with Gen X (14%) and boomers (10%).
With AI, Seeing Is Believing
Currently, these power users are the pioneers kicking the tires of generative AI, experimenting with new use cases, and developing informed opinions that will influence the rest of us.
Our research reveals that seeing is believing, especially among early power users. In fact, 74% of generative AI power users believe that the development of advanced AI could be as important as the creation of the internet.
Professionals who have tried generative AI tools have generally been impressed. They’re significantly more likely than non-users to find them helpful across a wide range of business use cases, including “finding information more quickly than a traditional search engine.”
Already, 64% of generative AI power users and 35% of casual users believe that AI can help them find answers faster than a traditional search engine, compared with only 7% of those who haven’t tried using AI. Our study also indicates the switch from search engines to AI chatbots could come fairly quickly. The vast majority of current power users (87%) and casual users (80%) believe that AI chatbots will be able to return answers more quickly than traditional search engines do within two years, compared with 42% of non-users.
It will be important to revisit these studies as more people get hands-on time with generative AI tools when ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and Bing chat open their tools up to more users.
How AI Might Shape the Future of the Internet
Could tools like ChatGPT and Bing chat finally unseat the default way of finding information on the internet — using a search engine as the starting point, then clicking through to websites for more details — after decades of dominance?
In a likely future where more people use chatbots to find answers, there will likely be less of a need to click through to ad-supported websites for more information.
I don’t think anyone will miss wading through half a dozen distracting ads and autoplay videos while scrolling past someone’s overly SEO-optimized life story just to find a recipe for mac and cheese at the bottom of a long page. Currently, with a chatbot, you simply ask your question, then a recipe and ingredients list comes back within seconds.
But in the near future, publishers may need to reconsider how to make money from online content, if internet users are spending more time talking to chatbots and less time visiting ad-supported websites—which is one major way publishers get paid. As to what that new model might look like, our research offers some insights into current expectations.
The vast majority of survey respondents (84%) believe that chatbots should cite and link to sources used to create AI-generated answers. Up to this point, though, these citations appear as inconspicuous links in the footnotes of a chat window (if they appear at all).
In the near future, publishers may need to reconsider how to make money from online content.
As to alternative monetization schemes, just 49% of respondents believe original creators of works should be paid directly if their work was used to inform or train AI models.
One thing is for sure: Chatbot makers plan to make money on the anticipated changes in search behavior. Already, Microsoft has announced plans to integrate ads into Bing Chat. Additionally, Microsoft’s Corporate VP of Advertising Rob Wilk expressed optimism that Bing chat would deliver “rich insight…into user intent through deep conversational engagement, (which) will deliver smarter and more actionable opportunities for advertisers to engage with customers.”
And on a recent episode of the New York Times podcast Hard Fork, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said his company is “thoughtfully evolving” Bard AI as part of a commitment to “getting it right with the publisher ecosystem.” Search is a highly profitable business for Google and Microsoft, and both will want to maintain a model that incentivizes online publishers to keep creating new, high-quality content for people to consume and chatbots to learn from.
The Only Constant Is Change
Though the search engine improved upon the crude systems that came before it (does anyone remember webrings?), nothing lasts forever. ChatGPT has been generally available for only five months, but already, AI-powered chatbots are showing huge promise for a wide range of use cases. Chief among them is the ability to return useful results from the internet faster than a search engine can.
Even at this early stage, survey respondents think they’re more likely to use chatbots to find answers rather than search engines in the long run. Going forward, it’s up to the chatbot makers to determine the look and feel of their interfaces and how they’ll operate profitably while attracting more users. That will ultimately influence the new internet experience and the monetization model for online content as generative AI grows increasingly common.
Originally published at https://www.pcmag.com.
