Google is rolling out a handful of new AI-powered search features with a focus on some of the things that matter most to consumers during the summertime: planning vacations, shopping for seasonal trends, and identifying skin conditions.
At a summer-themed event in Manhattan last week, the company announced a new capability within Google’s computer vision-powered Lens tool geared toward helping to identify skin issues based on an image of an affected area.
Google also said it will expand a Google Maps feature that uses AI to fuse different images of a location into an immersive experience, add an AI-powered conversational integration for shopping and travel, and introduce a new tool that will let users preview garments on a range of different models using generative AI.
The new features are a continuation of Google’s efforts to weave the latest advances in AI across its search experiences as it fends off a challenge from Microsoft’s OpenAI-powered Bing chatbot.
Dermatology queries: Google spokesperson Craig Ewer said the company worked with a number of dermatologists and other skin experts in designing its skin conditions identification feature within Lens, which rolled out last week. Ewer caveated, however, that the tool should not be used as a substitute for an actual consultation with a doctor.
That caveat is important because Google’s previous effort around skin conditions, DermAssist, is not available in the US. It is currently undergoing further testing and Google’s website about the app notes that the “FDA has not evaluated this tool for safety or efficacy.” (The app is categorized as a Class 1 Medical Device in the European Union.)
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The idea is to make it easier for users to search for a rash or a bump that they might have trouble describing. Google claimed the tool can help identify conditions including “psoriasis,” “atopic dermatitis,” and “lichen simplex chronicus.”
The feature will join other categories of Google Lens searches such as plant identification and homework help.
An AI travel agent? While still in an experimental phase, Google’s new Search Generative Experience will create an “AI-powered snapshot” with information pulled from user reviews, photos, business profiles, and the web in response to questions from users about places or destinations.
David Gasca, director of product management at Google, said the feature aims to apply the latest generative AI to areas where users might otherwise be trying to triangulate information from a stack of browser tabs.
“One of the big areas that we’re focused on is complex journeys,” Gasca said at the event. “And these are things where you have to piece together information from lots of different places.”
Multimodal chatting: Google’s image capabilities, like those within its Lens tool, are likely to become all the more important as Google works toward making its AI chatbot more able to not only generate but also understand and interact with images for uses like identifying products or creating photo captions, as Google first laid out at its I/O event earlier this year.
These updates, incremental though they may be, show how Google is working to bring to life AI-powered tools that can work across text and images, building toward a more conversational search.