The Cost of Generative AI in Search Engines: Comment on GOOGLE, Meta, and the Inevitable Case of Internet-based Search

Since the beginning of the year, GOOGLE has focused on generativeAI tools that can summarize search results for users, help them draft essays and swap out overcast skies for sunshine in family photos. Today it’s showing off what similar tools could do for its core business—selling ads.

Offering generative AI in ads is likely expensive, because the computing costs to operate text- and image-generating models is sky high. At a conference last week, Meta AI executive Aparna Ramani said generating an output from those kinds of models is 1,000 times more expensive than using AI to recommend content and curate users’ News Feeds.

Dischler says the company will be “diligent” in monitoring the quality of images and text generated by the new features, some of which are available to advertisers in beta form already. Google is launching some of them more broadly than its top rival, Meta, which announced earlier this month that it was initially inviting select advertisers to try out its own generative AI features.

As anyone who has experimented with an AI chatbot or image generator knows, their output can be unpredictable and even distasteful. And they have raised public concern over whether their development benefited from copyright infringement.

It has been suggested that fears of the impact of internet-based search have been alleviated, because of the recent onslaught of artificial intelligence announcements by the company.