Google’s AI Overview is coming to a search results page near you, whether you want it to or not. The company announced on Monday that it is expanding the AI feature to more than 100 countries around the world.
Google debuted AI Overview, which uses generative AI to summarize the key points of your search topic and display that information at the top of the results page, to mixed reviews in May before subsequently expanding the program in August. Monday’s roll-out sees the feature made available in seven languages — English, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish — to users in more than 100 nations (you can find a full list of covered countries here)
AI Overview was first announced at Google I/O 2023 and originally was known as the Search Generative Experience. After spending a year as part of the company’s experimental Labs test bed, Google made Overview its default search experience in May 2024. Users were equally skeptical and critical of the new system, which provided dangerous and incorrect information to users, advising them on how many rocks to eat each day and reportedly telling them to add “about 1/8 cup of non-toxic glue to the sauce to give it more tackiness” and help prevent cheese from sliding off their pizzas.
https://t.co/W09ssjvOkJ pic.twitter.com/6ALCbz6EjK
— SG-r01 (@heavenrend) May 22, 2024
Despite its initial validity issues, Google pushed ahead in August, expanding the Overview feature to cover six additional countries: the U.K., India, Japan, Indonesia, Brazil, and Mexico. “With AI Overviews, we’re seeing that people have been visiting a greater diversity of websites for help with more complex questions,” the company wrote at the time. “And when people click from search result pages with AI Overviews, these clicks are higher quality for websites — meaning users are more likely to spend more time on the sites they visit.”
In October, the program took “another big leap forward,” according to the company, incorporating paid ads into its results, as well as enabling users to leverage Lens and ask questions about the moving objects within a given video clip. Not only does Lens provide links to visually similar products, it also provides reviews of the specific product you’re searching for, providing price comparisons and information on where to make the purchase.
Whether AI Overview ultimately revolutionizes search, as Google claims it will, or it becomes the next Microsoft Clippy, a feature so universally loathed by its user base that we’re still talking about how bad it was more than two decades after it was removed from Office, remains to be seen.
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.