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Google Launches New AI Search Engine: How to Sign Up

This experimental trial of Google Search competes directly with Bing AI and ChatGPT.

Google has launched Search Generative Experience, or SGE, an experimental version of Search that integrates artificial intelligence answers directly into results, the company said in a blog post on Thursday. 

Unlike a normal Google Search, which brings up a list of blue links, SGE uses AI to answer your questions right on the Google Search webpage. After entering a query in Google Search, a green or blue box will expand with a novel answer generated by Google’s large language model, like the one powering OpenAI’s ChatGPT. 

Google pulls this information from websites and links to sources used when generating an answer. It’s also possible to ask follow-up questions in SGE to get more precise results. 

At the moment, SGE isn’t open to the public and requires you to sign up to Google’s Search Labs. To join, click the link here. Search Labs is currently available only to a limited number people in the US and in English only, though you can join the waitlist. Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

With the launch of ChatGPT late last year, an AI chatbot that could answer almost any question with a unique answer, companies have been adding generative AI features to their products amid increased public interest. Google unveiled Bard earlier this year, an AI chatbot similar to ChatGPT. Microsoft followed up by adding ChatGPT into Bing directly, including an AI image generator powered by Dall-E, also by OpenAI. AI chatbots are powered by a large language model, or LLM, a technology that uses a massive set of text data to write sentences that mimic human language. The model essentially aims to figure out what the next best word should be when generating sentences, a process that’s been described as «autocomplete on steroids

AI was also a core focus earlier this month at Google I/O, the search giant’s annual developers conference, with the term being said more than 140 times during the two-hour presentation. During I/O, Cathy Edwards, vice president of engineering at Google, said that with a standard Google Search, people have to break up complex queries into multiple questions, sift through websites for information and formulate the answer in their heads. With SGE, the AI can do all of that for you.

How to join the Google Search Labs waitlist

Here’s how to join the waitlist for Search Labs so you can be among the first to test Google’s SGE:

  1. Open the Chrome browser on a computer.
  2. Sign into you Google account.
  3. Open a new tab in your browser.
  4. At the top right, there will be a Labs icon (of a beaker) if Labs is available to you.
  5. If the Labs icon is there, click it and then click Join Waitlist.

You’ll get an email when Labs becomes available.

SGE is part of Search Labs and includes experimental features such as Code Tips, which gives coding suggestions directly in Search, and Add to Sheets, a feature that can automatically bring in information found in Search into Google Sheets.

If you’re able to get into SGE now, Google requires you to agree to its privacy notice and asks you not to include sensitive or confidential personal information that «can be used to identify you or others in your interactions with SGE features.» This is because during this trial run, some data will be analyzed by human reviewers, although the data will be «stored in a manner that is not associated with your Google account.» It’s possible to delete interactions via the My Activity page.

Google also warns of the follies of generative AI and that accuracy may vary. This is likely referring to «hallucinations,» a problem found with generative AI where it can confidently say something is accurate when it isn’t. Google suggests you not rely on generative AI for medical, legal, financial or other professional services. 

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.SGE can be accessed via the Chome desktop web browser or the Android and iOS Google apps. a large language model

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Tariffs Explained: Latest on Trump’s Shifting Import Tax Plan, and What It Means

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Apple, I’m (Sky) Blue About Your iPhone 17 Air Color

Commentary: The rumored new hue of the iPhone 17 Air is more sky blah than sky blue.

I can’t help but feel blue about the latest rumor that Apple’s forthcoming iPhone 17 Air will take flight in a subtle, light-hued color called sky blue.

Sky blue isn’t a new color for Apple. It’s the featured shade of the current M4 MacBook Air, a shimmer of cerulean so subtle as to almost be missed. It’s silver left too close to an aquarium; silver that secretly likes to think it’s blue but doesn’t want everyone else to notice.

Do Apple employees get to go outside and see a real blue sky? It’s actually vivid, you can check for yourself. Perhaps the muted sky blue color reflects a Bay Area late winter/early spring frequent layer of clouds like we typically see here in Seattle.

«Who cares?» you might find yourself saying. «Everyone gets a case anyway.» I hear you and everyone else who’s told me that. But design-focused Apple is as obsessive about colors as they are about making their devices thinner. And I wonder if their heads are in the clouds about which hues adorn their pro products.

Making the case for a caseless color iPhone

I’m more invested in this conversation than most — I’m one of those freaks who doesn’t wrap my phone in a case. I find cases bulky and superfluous, and I like to be able to see Apple’s design work. Also, true story, I’ve broken my iPhone screen only twice: First when it was in a «bumper» that Apple sent free in response to the iPhone 4 you’re-holding-it-wrong Antennagate fiasco, and second when trying to take long exposure starry night photos using what I didn’t realize was a broken tripod mount. My one-week-old iPhone 13 Pro slipped sideways and landed screen-first on a pointy rock. A case wouldn’t have saved it.

My current model is an iPhone 16 Pro in black titanium — which I know seems like avoiding color entirely — but previously I’ve gone for colors like blue titanium and deep purple. I wanted to like deep purple the most but it came across as, in the words of Patrick Holland in his iPhone 14 Pro review, «a drab shade of gray or like Grimace purple,» depending on the light.

Pros can be bold, too

Maybe the issue is too many soft blues. Since the iPhone Pro age began with the iPhone 11 Pro, we’ve seen variations like blue titanium (iPhone 15 Pro), sierra blue (iPhone 13 Pro) and pacific blue (iPhone 12 Pro).

Pacific blue is the boldest of the bunch, if by bold you mean dark enough to discern from silver, but it’s also close enough to that year’s graphite color that seeing blue depends on the surrounding lighting. By comparison, the blue (just «blue») color of the iPhone 12 was unmistakably bright blue.

In fact, the non-Pro lines have embraced vibrant colors. It’s as if Apple is equating «pro» with «sophisticated,» as in «A real pro would never brandish something this garish.» I see this in the camera world all the time: If it’s not all-black, it’s not a «serious» camera.

And yet I know lots of pros who are not sophisticated — proudly so. People choose colors to express themselves, so forcing that idea of professionalism through color feels needlessly restrictive. A bright pink iPhone 16 might make you smile every time you pick it up but then frown because it doesn’t have a telephoto camera.

Color is also important because it can sway a purchase decision. «I would buy a sky blue iPhone yesterday,» my colleague Gael Cooper texted after the first rumor popped online. When each new generation of iPhones arrive, less technically different than the one before, a color you fall in love with can push you into trading in your perfectly-capable model for a new one.

And lest you think Apple should just stick with black and white for its professional phones: Do you mean black, jet black, space black, midnight black, black titanium, graphite or space gray? At least the lighter end of the spectrum has stuck to just white, white titanium and silver over the years.

Apple never got ahead by being beige

I’m sure Apple has reams of studies and customer feedback that support which colors make it to production each year. Like I said, Apple’s designers are obsessive (in a good way). And I must remind myself that a sky blue iPhone 17 Air is a rumored color on a rumored product so all the usual caveats apply.

But we’re talking about Apple here. The scrappy startup that spent more than any other company on business cards at the time because each one included the old six-color Apple logo. The company that not only shaped the first iMac like a tipped-over gumdrop, that not only made the case partially see-through but then made that cover brilliant Bondi blue.

Embrace the iPhone colors, Apple.

If that makes you nervous, don’t worry: Most people will put a case on it anyway.

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Astronomers Say There’s an Increased Possibility of Life on This Distant Planet

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers are working to confirm potential evidence of life on a distant exoplanet dubbed K2-18b.

Astronomers are nearing a statistically significant finding that could confirm the potential signs of life detected on the distant exoplanet K2-18b are no accident.

The team of astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, used data from the James Webb Space Telescope (which has only been in use since the end of 2021) to detect chemical traces of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), which they say can only be produced by life such as phytoplankton in the sea. 

According to the university, «the results are the strongest evidence yet that life may exist on a planet outside our solar system.»

The findings were published this week in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and point to the possibility of an ocean on this planet’s surface, which scientists have been hoping to discover for years. In the abstract for the paper, the team says, «The possibility of hycean worlds, with planet-wide oceans and H2-rich atmospheres, significantly expands and accelerates the search for habitable environments elsewhere.»

Not everyone agrees, however, that what the team found proves there’s life on the exoplanet.

Science writer and OpenMind Magazine founder Corey S. Powell posted about the findings on Bluesky, writing, «The potential discovery of alien life is so enticing that it drags even reputable outlets into running naive or outright misleading stories.» He added, «Here we go again with planet K2-18b.Um….there’s strong evidence of non-biological sources of the molecule DMS.»

K2-18b is 124 light-years away and much larger than Earth (more than eight times our mass), but smaller than Neptune. The search for signs of even basic life on a planet like this increases the chances that there are more planets like Earth that may be inhabitable, with temperatures and atmospheres that could sustain human-like lifeforms. The team behind the paper hopes that more study with the James Webb Space Telescope will help confirm their initial findings.

More research to do on finding life on K2-18b

The exoplanet K2-18b is not the only place where scientists are exploring the possibility of life, and this research is still an early step in the process, said Christopher Glein, a geochemist, planetary researcher and lead scientist at San Antonio’s Southwest Research Institute. Excitement over the significance of the research, he said, should be tempered.

«We need to be careful here,» Glein said. «It appears that there is something in the data that can’t be explained, and DMS/DMDS can provide an explanation. But this detection is stretching the limits of JWST’s capabilities.»

Glein added, «Further work is needed to test whether these molecules are actually present. We also need complementary research assessing the abiotic background on K2-18b and similar planets. That is, the chemistry that can occur in the absence of life in this potentially exotic environment. We might be seeing evidence of some cool chemistry rather than life.»

The TRAPPIST-1 planets, he said, are being researched as potentially habitable, as is LHS 1140b, which he said «is another astrobiologically significant exoplanet, which might be a massive ocean world.»

As for K2-18b, Glein said many more tests need to be performed before there’s consensus on life existing on it.

«Finding evidence of life is like prosecuting a case in the courtroom,» Glein said. «Multiple independent lines of evidence are needed to convince the jury, in this case the worldwide scientific community.» He added, «If this finding holds up, then that’s Step 1.»

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