Each second, each minute, and each hour, millions of people around the world type tens of thousands of keywords into Google, making the search engine process more than a trillion a year. Google as well as a few other search engines act as a general portal for billions of users accessing the World Wide Web. Google, Microsoft and OpenAI are among the latest tech firms to discover that there is a chance to reimagine this gateway using generative AI, and thus the rivalry began. Starting from this week, the search wars based on generative AI are now fully open.

The appeal of an AI-powered search bar is clear: instead of searching through related links separately, the individuals could write the query into a chatbot, and get a detailed response at once. For this to work effectively it means that the various AI models must be able to search the web for relevant information. The problem of plagiarism is now emerging as people are getting more conscious with the usage of generative AI products which contain contents that have probably been scraped without the permission of the owner, technology companies are now trying to cultivate new and friendly relationship with the media outlets to obtain the said content.

In response, a company called Perplexity, which markets an “answer engine” that leverages AI, can now reveal cooperation with such publishers as Time and Fortune on a revenue-sharing basis. In these arrangements, Perplexity getting ad money that they create from using AI-written answers that involve publishers’ content. Sponsored ‘related follow-up questions’ is one of the adverts techniques that Perplexity intends to launch this fall and currently, it has not been placing adverts. It is also establishing a media tie-up with News Corp, Vox Media, and The Atlantic; recently, it introduced its AI search prototype called SearchGPT. On the other hand, Google has managed to obtain the rights to use Reddit material for the training of future AI models, thus the only search engine is permitted to index Reddit. This change has underlined a shift in consumption whereby information is filtered and relayed by algorithms for users to view before the act tends to directly downshift direct traffic to publishers’ websites with regards to ad and subscription based revenue model.