Google has announced that they’re expanding its Search Generative Experience to over 120 new countries and regions, with Malaysia now one of them. Search Generative Experience is essentially its fancy new Google Search engine with generative AI included as a tool for users who wish to get AI-powered overviews of their results when they look up something.
To get started, you’ll have to enroll in Google’s Search Labs program first, which you can do so on both the Google app on your smartphone or on your Google Chrome browser on desktop. Sign up for Search Labs and once you’re confirmed into it, you can simply enable the Search Generative Experience experiment to get started. For Malaysians trying it out, the AI-powered search results will only be available via Google Chrome on desktop for now, with access on the Google app on your smartphone to follow in the coming weeks.
According to Google, with Search Generative Experience enabled, you can use Google Search in a more natural way. This is because rather than having to look up specific keywords and going through the results, you can simply ask it a question and get your answers along with the context, and then if you would like to dig deeper into the topic, you will be able to continue to ask it some follow up questions. The ability to ask it follow up questions is rolling out for English users over the coming weeks.
Google is also using its generative AI to improve its ability to translate one language to another. In a future update, you’ll soon be able to ask Google Search to translate phrases or sentences and, if certain words have more than one possible meaning, it will show you those terms underlined. You can then highlight those words and you’ll see the various possible meanings listed out for you so that Search can have better context over what you’re translating. At the moment though, Google is only adding the AI-powered translation for English to Spanish translations, with more languages planned for the future.
There will be some limitations of course, which Google themselves admit. Every time you look up something using Search Generative Experience, you will get the disclaimer that generative AI remains experimental and that the quality of the information may vary. As such, you’ll still want to ensure the information and results you get are valid by cross checking them yourself.
