Will ChatGPT reinvent search?
Source: Microsoft

Will ChatGPT reinvent search?

Microsoft and Google both revealed plans last week to introduce their own ChatGPT-style product, joining the hype around the AI-driven chatbot technology.

Developed by San Francisco-based startup OpenAI and introduced last November, ChatGPT taps generative artificial intelligence to provide people with human-like responses to their questions. The technology also generates a wide range of digital text that can be repurposed in nearly any context, including in tweets, blog posts, term papers, poetry and even computer code.

Microsoft, which is investing $10 billion in OpenAI, will integrate ChatGPT technology with its Bing search engine and Edge web browser.

Brad Smith. vice chair and president of Microsoft, said in a blog entry, “Today’s cutting-edge AI is a powerful tool for advancing critical thinking and stimulating creative expression. It makes it possible not only to search for information but to seek answers to questions. It can help people uncover insights amid complex data and processes. It speeds up our ability to express what we learn more quickly. Perhaps most important, it’s going to do all these things better and better in the coming months and years.”

Google will soon offer an AI and natural language-enhanced version of its Google search engine called Bard, as well as a chatbot.

However, Microsoft created more buzz, having introduced a limited version of the new Bing available to some users this week to rave reviews and drawing predictions that Bing may threaten Google’s search dominance.

Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella said at a media event, “This technology is going to reshape pretty much every software category.”

In China, JD.com, Alibaba and Baidu confirmed they are working on ChatGPT-style projects, as well. Meta is also planning to release similar technology across various products.

Microsoft said its search engine includes technology that identifies and removes problematic content from the chat service. However, the A.I. technologies are known for often producing toxic content, including misinformation, hate speech and biases against women and people of color.

Mr. Smith said on Microsoft’s blog, “We need to have wide-ranging and deep conversations and commit to joint action to define the guardrails for the future.”

BrainTrust

"The media frenzy going on about ChatGPT and Bard is hard to follow and changing daily. The best retailers can do right now is monitor how this plays out."

Mark Ryski

Founder, CEO & Author, HeadCount Corporation


"I’ve long said that the problem with search engines is that they still put the burden on the user ... it was a problem to be solved by direct-query AI..."

Ken Lonyai

Consultant, Strategist, Tech Innovator, UX Evangelist


"We’ve all been living with the hamhanded algorithms of Facebook and Twitter, which are little more than keyword-driven. I’ve said often they give AI a bad name."

Paula Rosenblum

Co-founder, RSR Research


Discussion Questions

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: Do you see ChatGPT and similar AI-driven technology transforming product discovery and online interactions for retailers? How should retailers prepare for the arrival of the technology?

Poll

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Neil Saunders
Famed Member
1 year ago

Yes, absolutely – AI can enhance search and, if it has knowledge of user preferences, can personalize the results. There are some glitches that need to be sorted out and it won’t be the only method of searching, but I expect this to become a much bigger part of the online retail landscape.

Mark Ryski
Noble Member
1 year ago

If you believe the headlines, this is the second coming of Christ. The fact is, the tech industry giants, Google and Microsoft (and others) are battling for online search supremacy because search drives ad revenue. Will AI-driven technology transform online transactions for retailers? Maybe, eventually — but like so much in the tech industry, the promises often fall short of reality. The media frenzy going on about ChatGPT and Bard is hard to follow and changing daily. The best retailers can do right now is monitor how this plays out.

Dion Kenney
1 year ago

What we are seeing with ChatGPT is only the first step in an eye-opening process that will train us to re-think how technology can create new possibilities and value. This will launch many new tools, technologies, and uses that most of us have never given a great deal of consideration to. Brace yourself, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

Gene Detroyer
Noble Member
Reply to  Dion Kenney
1 year ago

To quote you from the discussion on automation, “Bill Gates famously stated that we ‘always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.’”

John Lietsch
Active Member
1 year ago

Initially and as stated by Microsoft, AI-driven technology will dramatically improve online search; this is why ChatGPT has been referred to as the “Google Killer.” Eventually, AI-driven technology will become much more and that future remains less defined, more distant and the cause for the hype that is masking AI’s current capabilities (and flaws). It appears that in the immediate future, retailers will need to make sure that their online content and advertising strategies ensure that it is the subject of searches in which that retailer wishes to appear. It’s a little more difficult to tell how this technology will change all retail but with continued advancements in NLP (natural language processing) and the evolution from Weak AI to Strong AI, it’s easier to see how AI could help retailers deliver highly personalized content and interactions at almost all touchpoints in a customer journey, making the line between the physical and digital experiences almost indiscernible.

Peter Charness
Trusted Member
1 year ago

With great power comes great responsibility. People (rightly or wrongly) trust that the answers that come from AI tools are unbiased and correct. The possibility for introducing bias with or without intention is huge. Today’s search results at least give a small not overly prominent indication of when a result is sponsored, or is in fact an ad. An entire industry revolves around paid search and paid clicks. Can you imagine the impact of an AI-based result that was bought and paid for by a sponsor, therefore using AI to influence behavior to purchase specific products, as AI is currently used to support certain points of view and influence political or behavioral attitudes? As we open Pandora’s box we best think through how we can contain the unforeseen and unintended consequences.

Paula Rosenblum
Noble Member
1 year ago

One word. Yes.

The industry with the biggest challenge is education.
The industry with the most opportunity is healthcare.
Retail is kind of a middle-of-the-road impact industry.

Richard Hernandez
Active Member
Reply to  Paula Rosenblum
1 year ago

This. 100%.

Georganne Bender
Noble Member
1 year ago

No doubt ChatGPT will change the way consumers use search and how retailers interact with them online. In this instance I like the technology because it will provide better service to the shopper.

There has been a lot of talk on Twitter about AI-driven tech that provides articles, blog posts, etc. It’s a lazy way to get to the finish line. As a writer I am not a fan.

Susan O'Neal
Member
1 year ago

As an overwhelming amount of data becomes more universally accessible, the ability to know what questions to ask, what to look for and where become the differentiators. Solutions like ChatGPT and AI in general have tremendous potential to help cut through the noise, reduce the overwhelm and ultimately deliver more value.

Gary Sankary
Noble Member
1 year ago

The New York Times, in their story about the announcements last week, used a retail example — it was not a coincidence. They asked for a recipe recommendation, and a shopping list sorted by aisle for their local grocer. The results were excellent. We’re early in this technology’s development but, at first blush, at least for Microsoft, the results are eye-popping.

Shep Hyken
Active Member
1 year ago

A short answer: YES! The beauty of the platform is the ability to communicate with natural language. If you want more info, you just ask. If you want more detail, just ask. From the retailer’s perspective, they have to provide the content. The platform does the rest. The next year will see a HUGE change in how consumers search (for anything).

Brandon Rael
Active Member
1 year ago

Search has not evolved at the rate of other capabilities and technologies. Google has dominated the space for almost two decades, and the art of discovery and search is ripe for disruption. ChatGPT’s AI capabilities are a disruptor, and we have seen Google and Microsoft scramble to incorporate AI tools into their technology stack.

ChatGPT has just emerged and is going through plenty of growing pains. However as we know, AI is all about continuous improvement. As ChatGPT continues to evolve and other competitors emerge, we should expect a reinvention of search over time. It won’t be a dramatic overnight shift. However the advantages of AI capabilities will provide more personalized and optimized results over time.

Ken Lonyai
Member
1 year ago

Wow – so much I can say since this what I do…

First: all search today uses “AI.” It’s not obvious to most, but AI/ML is behind every query. LLMs (Large Language Models) are not search. They are a way to express content through written (or spoken) language. I’ve been using LLMs for a while and they are quite impressive in how well they’ve been trained to write. They know nothing. Their “knowledge” is an artifact of training and is affected by the means in which they write. They were never intended to be sources of information.

Now I’ve long said that the problem with search engines is that they still put the burden on the user. They (Google being the best) do a nice job of narrowing the web to pertinent results, but in the end, the user still has to sift through those results by investing time reading through each linked page, then returning to the search engine to try another and again — until they find the content they seek. People have just accepted this burden when lavishing praise on the likes of Google and others. I’ve long said it was a problem to be solved by direct-query AI that provides a summarized result without burdening users to chase links. Thanks for listening Microsoft.

Bing has taken up my challenge and is on the right track. Most searches are to get an answer, not to find research to cite. Some require more in-depth reading. For those (my estimate of 60 percent) that a summary of info is good enough, will benefit in far superior user experiences than today’s search design pattern. Bing is essentially seeing that. Google was blindsided.

Even when LLMs are merged with existing data, results are only as good as the underlying data. There’s still a compound problem there. How good is the data from the source websites? How many source websites were utilized for the resultant summary? What filtering was placed on sources of data used to influence the summary? By whom and why? How do secondary and tertiary queries work and are they better, refined, or merely alternate summaries? And more…

Nevertheless, the search industry has arrived at its next inflection point and in a couple of years, today’s search that we’re all comfortable with, will look like antiquity.

And BTW: this methodology is not internet search engine-only technology. I have been working on this for privately owned data such as is found in all enterprises, that is utilized internally and externally. That applies to e-commerce and retail as much as anything, so smart merchants should not be repeating the mistakes they made in the late-’90s by standing on the sidelines and waiting to see if this “fad” sticks or goes away. Retailers need to leverage this technology now or be left, again, in the dust.

Mark Ryski
Noble Member
Reply to  Ken Lonyai
1 year ago

Excellent detail Ken — thank you. So if retailers shouldn’t be sitting on the sidelines, what specifically do you recommend that they do now?

Ken Lonyai
Member
Reply to  Mark Ryski
1 year ago

There are two tracks:

  1. Internally, purveyors of large swaths of data available to employees for daily tasks can employ LLM enhanced search techniques to quickly provide human readable data summaries, not forgoing their sources of info. That is the complimentary AI approach that is a time/burden saver for humans.
  2. Externally, most e-commerce sites have some form of website search for products. Some are a flat search that bring back a slew of unfocused results. Better ones employ algorithmic enhancements that narrow searches and many have filters for the same purpose, such as limiting price range, or size or whatever. All can be streamlined two ways. First by combining many factors into to a conversational UI that can understand compound sentences like “I want sneakers that aren’t Nike, under $100 in blue or black, size 7.” LLMs and good data make that 100 percent feasible today. Add conversational guided selling and a small level of proactivity to the response/conversation and there’s the killer app—all viable today. Believe me — I will be covering this in one of my upcoming podcast episodes.
Paula Rosenblum
Noble Member
Reply to  Ken Lonyai
1 year ago

Wow. Thanks for the lesson (seriously!). I’m considered a really good googler, probably because I’ve been at it since the beginning and understand keywords that are relevant or not. So I usually find what I’m looking for. ChatGPT is on another level and understands nuance and subtleties already.

I would also think it will ultimately become smart enough to check for varying sources. In fact, it does some of that already. If facts are disputed, it will find them.

We’ve all been living with the hamhanded algorithms of Facebook and Twitter, which are little more than keyword-driven. I’ve said often they give AI a bad name. As people start to play with ChatGPT, I can see it getting mental juices going.

No one is going to want to sit on the sidelines for this one.

Gene Detroyer
Noble Member
1 year ago

How many futuristic movies have we seen with characters or devices that use such technology? Have we ever thought we would see that technology for real? We are almost there.

I am not sure to what degree it will transform product discovery or online search. But I am sure it will impact our lives in ways we cannot imagine.

Richard Hernandez
Active Member
Reply to  Gene Detroyer
1 year ago

The movie that comes to mind first is “Minority Report” and that didn’t bode well….

Ananda Chakravarty
Active Member
1 year ago

There will be change. However it will start as adjacency — search is used in so many ways, the function, especially for retail will be broader than just finding products or recipes. The advantage is that the GPT stream will bring better interaction between humans and machine to make humans lives easier. Reinvent is a harsh word, very little is ever completely reinvented. Also, both Google and Microsoft have the best AI solution engineers in the market. For Google, this will change their ad model. For Microsoft, this will change their software model – so while change is in the air, both companies need to move cautiously. Retailers can start by looking at their own site search, chatbots and customer service solutions to see if GPT AI can be included (if it’s not already).

Joel Rubinson
Member
1 year ago

I find ChatGPT and a similar app to be amazing. I have asked ChatGPT about calculus problems, code in R, health questions, and even where the Coneheads are from, and always get the right answer. In stark contrast is the level (lack of intelligence) of Alexa, and chat bots in websites. I have to believe that the revolutionary impact of this AI technology is at its earliest stages and must be of the highest priority for retailers with an online presence.

Bob Phibbs
Trusted Member
1 year ago

This is like electricity in the time of oil lamps. Those who poo-poo it do not realize the enormous power this will unleash for information at every level. On a personal level, say good-bye to your IP as all the hard work we did with H2 tags, etc, has given the bots unlimited resources to serve up information … and they’ve only scanned 10% of available content.

Ken Lonyai
Member
Reply to  Bob Phibbs
1 year ago

Bob: no doubt there will be litigation around how public search engines that utilize LLM’s source data to respond to queries as there will be with generative AI solutions that do things like create artwork from training on existing art.

Keep in mind though, your IP was compromised long ago, when you allowed it to be indexed by search engines that sell ads against it.

All art is influenced by that which comes before it.

Bob Phibbs
Trusted Member
Reply to  Ken Lonyai
1 year ago

Maybe, but litigation would be impossible to prove. Actually, my IP was compromised by lazy writers taking what I wrote and slightly modifying it. 😉

Craig Sundstrom
Craig Sundstrom
Noble Member
1 year ago

Umm, what exactly is it going to transform it into? I acknowledge the apocryphal story about wanting faster horses — i.e. one often doesn’t know what they’re missing until they see it — but nonetheless, I struggle to envision some quantum leap. That’s not to say a better search function might not be developed and leave Google behind, but I see that more as an industry issue … I don’t see society — or retail — being transformed by it.

James Tenser
Active Member
1 year ago

AI is not a result, it’s a foundational technology. As with other digital tech advances, we can expect a few brilliant applications, a few duds, and many more that are just meh.

Apparent perils abound — such as college students avoiding the effort of writing original term papers. Hand-wringers overlook that AI tools could be used by teachers to evaluate that work too.

For an amusing and prescient take on this ca. 1958, check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Dunn_and_the_Homework_Machine

I would anticipate AI bots used extensively by marketers to generate vast quantities of social media posts and emails This will likely be countered by other AI tools that human beings can use to filter out such “trash content.”

In the retail context, AI might bring welcome improvement to the user experience in loyalty programs by improving offer relevance and offering in-context answers to shopper questions (instead of the typical dumb FAQs and brain-dead chatbots).

Certainly, AI tools have potential to enhance online product search — especially where user queries are less-than-precise. Retailers should not need to build this on their own, as the major platforms will likely offer APIs to AI-as-a-service.

For retail decision-makers, AI-powered tools hold tremendous potential to enable a clearer view of performance and eliminate a large proportion of routine knowledge work through automation. This advance (already underway) may have a less obvious impact on shoppers, but should result in superior experiences.

John Karolefski
Member
1 year ago

Everyone who is enthusiastic about ChatGPT and its potential to enhance the online retail experience, should google “Bing chatbot unhinged.”

Roland Gossage
Member
1 year ago

AI technology such as chatGPT is already being used in next-generation product discovery solutions that are powered by Google Cloud Discovery AI search engines. This next-generation engine understands the semantic intent behind a shopper’s query – helping customers find what they are looking for, faster. The real power behind this tech comes in how it understands natural language queries, which isn’t how customers currently engage with brands’ site search engines.

Previous generations of product discovery solutions relied upon keyword search (such as product type, color, style, etc) and this is how customers still search for products today. In order to really capitalize on the power of AI, retailers must teach their shoppers to use natural language queries in eCommerce search, in order to deliver the seamless, personalized online shopping experiences customers have come to expect.