Rethinking search with generative AI

Confidential Client
AI Search Startup
January 2021

The online search experience has been steadily eroded over the years, picked by ads, SEO, and pseudo-content. Forward to today, where Microsoft, OpenAI, and Google are in a battle for dominance using large language models like ChatGPT and Bard. Unfortunately, the root problems plaguing search persist because none of them actually consider how humans learn and gather info. We have been developing an answer to this problem, and the myriad of other problems related to search as a stealth mode venture.

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Product Design
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Inward Research
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System Design
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Approach

Search’s dominant player, Google, has been resting on an increasingly ad-ridden and SEO page rank model for far too long—and now sees the seas of disruption bubbling by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, fuelled by Microsoft's gargantuan investment. AI search (it seems) has arrived through the familiar modality of a chat window! However, in the rush to chatbot everything, we believe a fundamental reality about how people find and explore information has been ignored. With this flaw in mind, we have been brewing an ambitious project that aims to transform the way people search.

Our approach for this project was like any other client engagement - by diving deep into customer and use case development, carefully examining search and information gathering behaviors, the search market ecosystem and infrastructure, and its related technical domains. This comprehensive analysis identified key interventions and opportunities, paving the way for a fresh and disruptive take on online search – and pinpointing areas where our product can make a massive impact for users.

In parallel, we‘ve been designing, experimenting, and building proof-of-concepts that demonstrate our unique take on search and information gathering activities. Our team has found a way to integrate generative AI that feels like part of a broader cohesive search experience, instead of something simply bolted on to legacy page-rank text-field.

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Outcome

Our team is excited about the potential of this phase of machine intelligence, and the almost-daily groundbreaking announcements. Our goal is to someday reshape the world of online search and to push the boundaries of user interaction and information gathering, with a little help from generative AI.

As such, this project is currently in stealth mode as we continue to refine and develop the experience and underlying technology.

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