Google could soon have a new competitor on the web. Although its search engine is the most used in the world, Meta wants to compete with it. According to The Information website, Facebook’s parent company is working on a search engine powered by artificial intelligence.
In addition to competition, this project is also a way for the company to reduce its dependence on Google and Microsoft (owner of the Bing search engine).
A search engine in development
Specifically, the Meta search engine could provide AI-generated search summaries of current events within its assistant, Meta AI. Integrated with Facebook and Instagram, the latter currently uses Google and Bing to answer questions about recent news and events.
However, this should not last because Meta has been using an indexing robot for several months, a software that scans the web to collect resources (web pages, images, etc.) and index them. A team at the company would also develop a database of information for Meta AI. Added to this would be the development of a location database to compete with Google Maps.
On October 25, Meta also announced a multi-year agreement with the Reuters news agency, to use its press articles to answer user questions.
The announcement of this project comes as OpenAI unveiled its own AI-powered search engine, Search GPT, in July. Although this product, currently available in limited access, could be a serious competitor for Google, it had a difficult start and failed to convince its first testers.
Source: BFM TV
