Google is rolling its experimental Search Generative Experience (SGE) out in India and Japan, serving English and Hindi.
The system, which uses generative AI to serve search results, provides support for voice search and audio responses.
Users will have to opt into the service, while search results featuring links will display arrows that, when clicked, show the website the search engine sourced its information from.
The move is seen as a digital extension of Google's ad services. The highest SGE satisfaction rate among early users is among young adults, with many praised the functionality as it allows them to ask follow-up questions to their initial search queries.
Google has also reassured advertisers that users are still seeing ads on the SGE screen.
Google earns most of its revenue from ad sales. Microsoft has been experimenting with its own generative AI-powered version of search engine Bing for several months.
The company suggests 1% of market share in Search is worth around $2 billion. Adding to the competitive AI arena, Google has responded with its Duet AI in Workspace and Duet AI in Google Cloud, charging the same amount per month as Microsoft's Microsoft 365 Copilot.