Google Touts Upgrades to Generative AI-Powered SGE

Google on Tuesday shared details about upgrades to its generative AI-powered search experience, or what it calls SGE — a move channel partners might find interesting.

The web giant first introduced the capability a little less than three months ago. Now, it’s made updates that include summarizing the articles you’re reading, after you’ve clicked their respective links.

In an Aug. 15 blog, Rany Ng, vice president of product management for Google’s search division, called the capability a versatile one, “whether it’s deepening your understanding of complicated concepts, boosting your coding skills or tracking down details within a complex topic.”

Google’s Rany Ng

“When you’re researching something new, or looking for an explanation of a concept, you might come across a term you don’t understand or just might want more information about,” Ng added. “To make this easier, we will soon roll out improvements to our AI-generated responses for various topics or questions related to science, economics, history and more. With this update, you’ll be able to hover over certain words to preview definitions and see related diagrams or images on the topic. From here, you can tap to learn more.”

Where SGE Might Apply to Channel Partners

If you’re a channel-centric programmer developing code for customers, SGE could have some applicability beyond the consumer realm.

“[L]earning more about coding is probably on your running to-do list, and generative AI can be a helpful tool,” Ng wrote. “Starting today, we’ll add new capabilities to SGE so it’s easier to understand and debug generated code.”

Soon, SGE will start color-coding code segments in overviews and including syntax highlighting. This, Ng said, will make it “faster and easier to identify elements like keywords, comments and strings, helping you better digest the code you see at a glance.”

The rest of the SGE updates apply to basic web browsing. For instance, some web pages will feature an article’s bullet points so you’ll know whether you want to read the full document. Google SGE also will support jumping to a relevant section of the article you’re considering. Perhaps not surprisingly, these features only will work with public sites, not those behind paywalls.

When, Where to Look for SGE

Google’s SGE functionality won’t be available en masse right away. For now, Google is rolling it out as part of its opt-in Search Labs program.

In Google’s latest earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai briefly discussed SGE. Over time, he said, “this will just be how Search works.”