Examining The Start of Web War 1 For AI-Infused Search

Generative AI is having another huge, headline-generating month, which is becoming a regular thing at this point. February kicked off with Google and Microsoft elbowing each other in and out of the spotlight with news of upcoming releases that will bake generative AI into their respective search functionalities. 

The product previews as a whole generated a lot of buzz around the future of web searches, search-based advertising models, SEO and other topics. But after those previews were dissected, it was discovered that the prompted outputs shown in demonstrations from both companies had errors presented as facts. 

Overall, the updates set the stage for our interactions with the internet to fundamentally change — but not quite yet. Let’s dissect all the good and cumbersome generative AI-search news from Google and Microsoft in the first half of February. 

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The timeline of events, so far

‍Monday, February 6: Google announced via a blog post that it will be releasing Bard, a…