Technologies

Google’s AI Search Could Mean Radical Changes for Your Internet Experience

At Google I/O, the company unveiled an experimental version of Search that integrates AI-generated responses. Will it break the balance of the internet?

The future of Google Search is a big green box.

That’s exactly what Google showed off this month at Google I/O, the company’s yearly developer conference. The theme for 2023 was AI, a term mentioned more than 140 times during the two-hour keynote presentation. Google unveiled AI products that will actually be released to the public, an about-face for the apprehensive internet giant in response to growing competition.

Late last year, OpenAI launched ChatGPT to near-universal adulation. Suddenly, everybody had access to a generative AI engine that could seemingly answer any question with a novel response. It’s powered by a large language model, or LLM, that essentially lets it act as «autocomplete on steroids,» using massive amounts of text data to figure out what the next best word should be.

The power and ease of ChatGPT helped it become the fastest growing consumer web platform ever. It prompted Microsoft to up its investment into OpenAI and integrate ChatGPT’s tech directly into Bing search earlier this year, a move that helped the company see a 16% increase in traffic. The day before Microsoft unveiled Bing AI, Google announced its own generative AI engine, Bard, although it flubbed the launch and lost $100 billion in stock market value in the process. The stock has since rebounded to its highest level so far this year.

In many ways, Google I/O was a referendum on the company’s wonky entrance into consumer AI and a clear message to skeptics (and investors) that it’s willing to take radical steps to stay at the forefront of internet search, even if that means upending its core product. Google Search has long been the engine for how we all look for product information, find the latest news and otherwise interact with the internet, and for how many businesses make money.

The new Search Generative Experience, or SGE, is an experimental version of Search that deprioritizes the 10 blue links that have defined Google for the past quarter century. Instead, any query, regardless of how specific, gets answered in a mushrooming green box that expands as it fills the screen with a person’s answer.

«Now search does the heavy lifting for you,» said Cathy Edwards, vice president of engineering at Google, during I/O. She said that in the Search we know today, complex queries have to be broken down into smaller questions where you, the user, have to sift through the information yourself and formulate the answer in your head. SGE can do all of that automatically, even allowing you to ask follow-up questions.

Google Search Generative Experience is an experimental version of Search that integrates AI-generated results, similar to Bing and ChatGPT.

CNET

At the same time, it also means not having to visit multiple sites – clicks that webpages rely on, potentially upending the internet’s ad-driven business model.

Google is by far the largest player in online search, with 93% market share, according to Statcounter. Online search engines are also the greatest drivers of traffic for websites, with 68% of online experiences beginning at a search engine, according to a 2019 report by Brightedge Research. Google’s dominance in search at one point helped it see a valuation of $2 trillion.

With SGE, Google is potentially thrusting internet users and businesses into a new future, one that’ll require a rethinking of how quality information can continue to percolate while also incentivizing people into creating valuable content to feed its AI machine.

Because sign-ups just started for SGE, there isn’t any data yet to share regarding user experience. Microsoft, however, has been gathering feedback for Bing AI over the last three months and could provide a lens on how consumers may react with AI-driven Google searches.

«Feedback on the answers generated by the new Bing has been mostly positive, with 71% of those in preview giving the AI-powered answers a thumbs-up, said a Microsoft spokesperson. «We’re seeing a healthy engagement on the chat feature, with multiple questions asked during a session to discover new information.»

It’s unclear how AI-generated news stories will filter into Google’s or Bing’s AI results. Already, publications, including CNET, are experimenting with AI written articles. Unfortunately, AI itself isn’t always accurate and can have «hallucinations,» where it confidently says something is correct when it isn’t.

If the hallucination problem is eventually solved, generative AI in search could be faster and ultimately better for consumers. But it’s still unknown as to how it could affect the digital publishing industry, especially if people forgo clicking links en masse.

«As we experiment with new LLM-powered capabilities in Search, we’ll continue to prioritize approaches that send valuable traffic to a wide range of creators and support a healthy, open web,» a Google spokesperson said. Though it’s true that Google does link to sources prominently in SGE, it’s uncertain if SGE will translate to increased or higher quality traffic for sites.

Microsoft didn’t answer any questions regarding traffic to sources when using AI search. Google said it doesn’t have plans to share about publisher compensation but would «continue to work with the broader ecosystem.»

«I think [generative AI] is going to bring down the amount of traffic going out because that’s the purpose of it,» said Monica Ho, chief marketing officer at SOCi, a digital marketing company. However, she posits that traffic coming in for sites might be higher quality, as people are looking for specific information versus bouncing between sites.

If Google becomes undependable for traffic, there might not be viable alternatives. Social media platforms such as Facebook have proved to be unreliable partners for publications, down-ranking news on a whim, according to Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and professor of political communication at the University of Oxford. He added that platforms like Instagram or TikTok «drive comparatively few referrals, and do not really feature links the way search does and social did.»

At the moment, search engines «crawl» websites daily to glean new information and index it into results. Websites allow engines to crawl for free because of the traffic conversion. But if AI-search leads to fewer clicks, the search economy may need an entirely new rethinking.

«I expect that original content will be placed behind paywalls and require LLM models to pay in order to read it.,» said Don White, CEO of Satisfi Labs, a conversational AI company. In a «Spotify-style compensation model,» White sees a future where sites are paid-per-view.

Ultimately, Google will likely need to find a way for revenue to reach creators and publications so that there’s still an incentive to create quality content.

«Quality data has to feed the engine, and Google’s not creating all of their own unique, authentic original content,» said Ho. «It has to come from creators. They know that they’re going to have to feed that engine somehow and make it worthwhile for content to keep coming.»

Editors’ note: CNET is using an AI engine to create some personal finance explainers that are edited and fact-checked by our editors. For more, see this post.

Technologies

Lemon8 and TikTok Could Be Banned. Here’s How the Apps Are Different

TikTok and Lemon8 are owned by the same parent company, but they offer different experiences.

TikTok faces another sale deadline Saturday, and unless a US buyer intervenes — or President Donald Trump extends the deadline again — the app could disappear for US users. If the ban goes into effect, TikTok wouldn’t be the only app to disappear: TikTok’s sister app, Lemon8, could be caught in the crossfire.

Read more: A VPN Alone Probably Won’t Bypass TikTok Bans. Here’s Why

Lemon8 is owned by ByteDance, the same parent company that owns TikTok. It’s one of the top Lifestyle apps in Apple’s App Store, and it has more than 10 million downloads in the Google Play store.

«Lemon8 is a lifestyle community focused app powered by TikTok, where you can discover and share authentic content on a variety of topics such as beauty, fashion, travel, food, and more,» the app’s description reads in both stores.

Here’s what you need to know about Lemon8.

Note: I reached out to ByteDance for this story, and the company did not respond for comment.

What is Lemon8?

Lemon8 is a video- and photo-sharing platform that eschews the vertical-scrolling format of TikTok in favor of a Pinterest board-style format. But what Lemon8 and TikTok do have in common is that both have Following and For You tabs to show you posts from creators you follow and posts the app thinks you will like.

Lemon8’s content is split into six topic tabs, plus a seventh tab called All. The other tabs are Fashion, Beauty, Food, Wellness, Travel and Home. These tabs can be found across the top of your screen, and tapping into these tabs shows you recommended and suggested posts.

Posts can be swipeable photo collections like in Instagram, or TikTok-style videos. Some creators add text to their photos to label clothing or a product. Some will also include the price of the item in the text.

How is Lemon8 different from TikTok and other apps?

Lemon8 is different from other apps in terms of what is posted and how it’s presented.

Lemon8 has a lot of influencer ads and product recommendations. It’s difficult to tell what is and isn’t sponsored content, and this appears to be the norm across the app. TikTok also has sponsored content, but usually these are marked as such in the bottom-left corner.

There aren’t a lot of memes or jokes on Lemon8 compared to other apps, either. You can find memes on Lemon8, but various hashtags associated with «memes,» like «funnymemes» and «catmemes,» have fewer than 1 million views (as opposed to hundreds of millions on Instagram). This could be because Lemon8 is still catching on in the US, but my suspicion is Lemon8 isn’t meant for memes. It’s meant to be more of a guidebook to help you achieve a certain lifestyle or aesthetic.

There’s also a lot of writing in Lemon8. For example, post captions might include instructions for a recipe or a deeper breakdown of an outfit. TikTok captions can have useful information, but those captions are more about connecting posts to hashtags to get more views and don’t necessarily add new information to the TikTok post. Lemon8 uses captions in a similar way to Instagram posts, but Lemon8 captions have one key difference from Instagram: templates.

Lemon8 lets you use templates for your posts to help you quickly format and to give you an idea of what to caption your post. There are caption templates for fashion, shopping finds, beauty, food and travel.

Lemon8 reminds me of a mashup between the magazines Martha Stewart Living, Muscle & Fitness and Travel + Leisure. You can find some useful tips in Lemon8 to help you achieve a desired aesthetic or find some vacation inspiration, but it’s not clear what is and isn’t an ad.

What are people saying about Lemon8?

People’s reaction to Lemon8 is seemingly positive so far. One TikTok creator posted a video calling Lemon8 «Pinterest, but interactive.» Another said Lemon8 is a combination of Pinterest, Instagram and TikTok.

However, this positivity could be artificially inflated. ZDNet reports that many TikTok posts about Lemon8 have described the app with similar language, making some believe ByteDance paid these creators.

And some Lemon8 creators’ claims make this theory sound more viable. One Lemon8 creator told Insider that ByteDance paid them to post on the app. Two other Lemon8 creators showed Insider emails that outlined the app’s payment structure.

Who owns Lemon8?

ByteDance, the Chinese tech company that owns TikTok, also owns Lemon8. According to ZDNet, ByteDance is positioning Lemon8 to be an Instagram rival as more users stop using, or abandon, Meta’s app.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a leaked internal memo from Meta showed that Instagram engagement was declining. ByteDance executives could be hoping to capitalize on this by giving Instagram users an alternative app in the form of Lemon8. And while Lemon8 was released globally in 2020, the app’s recent growth might show ByteDance’s gamble is paying off.

Will Lemon8 be banned alongside TikTok?

Since Lemon8 is owned by ByteDance, which also owns TikTok, it’s possible that the app will be banned alongside TikTok on April 5.

The law requiring the sale of TikTok could be applied generally to other apps that are owned and operated by ByteDance and its subsidiaries. When TikTok shutdown operations in the US in January, Lemon8 was shutdown alongside the app. If TikTok shuts down again, Lemon8 likely will as well.

Should you download Lemon8?

Even with a shutdown looming, Lemon8 is free, so you can download and try the app now before the sale deadline. Just know the app’s posts resemble instructional guides more than memes to share, and many posts feel like advertisements.

What’s Lemon8’s privacy policy?

Most of Lemon8’s privacy policy seems standard for social media apps. It states Lemon8 collects personal and location information to provide you with a better app experience. Some collected information includes your IP address and browsing history. But part of the app’s privacy policy might raise eyebrows.

«The personal information we collect from you may be stored on a server located outside of the country where you live,» the policy reads. The company has servers around the world, according to the policy, so your information could be stored in any of them.

This is different from how Lemon8’s sister app TikTok stores some user’s data. The company stores US-based user data in Oracle servers. TikTok CEO Shou Chew said ByteDance employees in China can access this data, but with «robust cybersecurity controls and authorization approval» overseen by a US-based security team.

For more on the TikTok ban, here’s what to know about the Supreme Court’s decision, here’s what could happen next and here are other apps users are flocking to.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for April 4, #193

Three of the four categories are especially tough today. Here are hints and the answers, for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, No. 193, for April 4.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

I only solved one of the four categories for today’s Connections: Sports Edition on my own, so if you need help, you’re not alone.

The yellow category was pretty simple, but after that I couldn’t make any connections. It might help if you know a lot about a certain NBA player’s resume. Read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is out of beta now, making its debut on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 9. That’s a sign that the game has earned enough loyal players that The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by the Times, will continue to publish it. It doesn’t show up in the NYT Games app but now appears in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can continue to play it free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Do better.

Green group hint: March Madness.

Blue group hint: Six-time all-star.

Purple group hint: Think Wimbledon.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Not meeting expectations.

Green group: Teams in the Women’s Final Four.

Blue group: Teams Kawhi Leonard has played for.

Purple group: Ends in a piece of tennis equipment.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is not meeting expectations. The four answers are bust, disappointment, dud and failure.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is teams in the Women’s Final Four. The four answers are Bruins, Gamecocks, Huskies and Longhorns.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is teams Kawhi Leonard has played for. The four answers are Aztecs, Clippers, Raptors and Spurs.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ends in a piece of tennis equipment. The four answers are bracket, eyeball, horseshoes and internet.

Quick tips for Connections: Sports Edition

#1: Don’t grab for the easiest group. For each word, think about other sports categories it might fit in – is this a word that can be used in football, or to describe scoring options?

#2: Second meanings are important. The puzzle loves to use last names and even college names that mean other things, to fool you into thinking they are words, not names.

#3: And the opposite is also true. Words like HURTS might seem like a regular word, but it’s also the last name of at least one pro athlete.

Technologies

Skip Your iPhone’s Lockscreen: Here’s the Hidden Flashlight Trick You Need to Know

A couple of taps can really make a difference on your iPhone.

Not long ago, your iPhone’s lockscreen would only allow two app shortcuts that you couldn’t change: camera controls and a flashlight toggle. However, iOS 18.2 allows you to customize these shortcuts to almost anything you might want. This small but impactful change is one of many ways iOS 18 supercharges customization for iPhone and iPad users. But what if you still want an easy-to-access way to toggle your flashlight without unlocking your phone?

Apple introduced an accessibility feature in iOS 14 that, once enabled, allows you to perform actions by just tapping on the back of your phone. The feature is called Tap Back and it remains a sleeper feature that’s sneakily hidden away in your settings menu. Enabling Tap Back essentially allows you to create a button on the back of your iPhone to perform an action without needing to take up any space.

Once you have Tap Back enabled, it doesn’t take long to see how much of a game-changer it can be with its added convenience. Below, we’ll show you how to set it up so a couple of taps on the back of your iPhone will let you launch just about anything you want.

For more, check out what’s in the latest iOS 18.4 release.

How to set up Back Tap on iPhone

Whether you want to link Back Tap with your flashlight, camera or launch a different iPhone app, the path through your iPhone settings begins the same way.

On your compatible iPhone (iPhone 8 or later), launch the Settings application and go to Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap. Now you have the option to launch your action (in this case, your flashlight) with either two or three taps. Although two taps is obviously faster, I would suggest three taps because if you fidget with your phone, it’s easy to accidentally trigger the accessibility feature.

Once you choose a tap option, select the Flashlight option — or a different action if you prefer. You’ll see over 30 options to choose from, including system options like Siri or taking a screenshot, to accessibility-specific functions like opening a magnifier or turning on real-time live captions. You can also set up Back Tap to open the Control Center, go back home, mute your audio, turn the volume up and down and run any shortcuts you’ve downloaded or created.

You’ll know you’ve successfully selected your choice when a blue checkmark appears to the right of the action. You could actually set up two shortcuts this way — one that’s triggered by two taps and one that’s triggered by three taps to the iPhone’s back cover.

Once you exit the Settings application, you can try out the newly enabled Back Tap feature by tapping the back of your iPhone — in my case, to turn on the flashlight. To turn off the flashlight, you can tap on the back of your iPhone as well, but you can also just turn it off from your lock screen if that’s easier.

For more great iPhone tips, here’s how to keep your iPhone screen from dimming all the time and canceling all those subscriptions you don’t want or need.