Big Tech’s AI Endgame Is Coming Into Focus

Highlights

These developments signal a broader trend in the tech industry towards creating all-encompassing AI-powered platforms that aim to be the one-stop shop for users' online needs. As these companies continue to invest heavily in AI research and development, we can expect to see more integrated and intelligent features that blur the lines between different digital services.

In addition to enhancing user convenience and efficiency, these advancements also raise important questions about data privacy, algorithmic bias, and the potential for AI systems to manipulate or control human behavior. As Big Tech's AI endgame comes into focus, it is crucial for regulators, policymakers, and society as a whole to engage in discussions about the ethical implications of these technologies and ensure that they are developed and deployed responsibly.

If has its way, there will be no search bars, no search terms, no searching (at least not by humans). The very tool that has defined the company—and perhaps the entire internet—for nearly three decades could soon be overtaken by a chatbot. Last month, at its annual software conference, Google launched “AI Mode,” the most drastic overhaul to its search engine in the company’s history.

The feature is different from the AI summaries that already show up in Google’s search results, which appear above the usual list of links to outside websites. Instead, AI Mode functionally replaces Google Search with something akin to ChatGPT. You ask a question and the AI spits out an answer. Instead of sifting through a list of blue links, you can just ask a follow-up. Google has begun rolling out AI Mode to users in the United States as a tab below the search bar (before “Images,” “Shopping,” and the like). The company said it will soon introduce a number of more advanced, experimental capabilities to AI Mode, at which point the feature could be able to write a research report in minutes, “see” through your smartphone’s camera to assist with physical tasks such as a DIY crafts project, help book restaurant reservations, make payments. Whether AI Mode can become as advanced and as seamless as Google promises remains far from certain, but the firm appears to be aiming for something like an everything app: a single tool that will be able to do just about everything a person could possibly want to do online.

Seemingly every major tech company is after the same goal. OpenAI markets ChatGPT, for instance, as able to write code and summarize documents, help shop, produce graphics, and naturally, search the web. Elon Musk is notoriously obsessed with the idea of turning X into an everything app. Meta says you can use its AI “for everything you need”; Amazon calls its new, generative AI–powered Alexa+ “an assistant available to help any time you want”; Microsoft bills its AI Copilot as a companion “for all you do”; and Apple has marketed Apple Intelligence and a revamped Siri as tools that will revolutionize how people use their iPhones (which encompass, for many users, everything). Even Airbnb, once focused simply on vacation rentals, is redesigning itself as a place where “you can sell and do almost anything,” as its CEO, Brian Chesky, recently said.