Project Magi: Google’s Next Frontier
Remember when during the covid pandemic, everyone you know decided to buy themselves a smart speaker so that they could ask Alexa to set timers for cooking their favourite meal and asked Google to play the radio? If you own a smart speaker, you’ll probably know exactly what we mean when we say that they can be a bit… dim. However, behind closed doors at Google’s headquarters, researchers are completely redefining what this technology can achieve with the mysteriously named, AI powered: Project Magi.
Now before we go all doomsday about the dangers of AI (you can visit Twitter for that… Thanks Elon) we must say that although the Silicon Valley giant absolutely “could put new AI technology in phones and homes all over the world…” it would be only a minor detail in a new AI powered world.
What is Project Magi?
Project Magi is Google’s shift towards an AI based search engine. Forget OpenAI (but do read our blog about it!) Project Magi is evidence that Google is taking AI seriously and they have some seriously large ambitions for the future. But what does AI assisted search offer?
Enhancements to search
Magi will offer a much faster, much more personal and more predictive experience for its users and will diverge from the standard search bar to a conversational interface, similar to ChatGPT, likened to a personal chatbot or virtual assistant.
(This writer can’t help but think of Jarvis from Marvel’s Iron Man, complete with its own Queen’s English accent which will provide you with increasingly personal search results and adverts… Time will tell if that is a dream come true or the start of a B-movie horror.)
A threat To eCommerce brands?
For eCommerce brands, Project Magi will also allow users to purchase goods entirely through Google, without needing to direct them through to your site. The potential for harm to eCommerce enterprises comes when we consider that A) Google will almost certainly take a cut of the profit if a translation was conducted through Magi and B) Magi could potentially limit your pool of new customers and limit discovery.
If Magi identifies your site and its contents as irrelevant, it will likely not serve your content to a user who might have otherwise been enticed to your site. Admittedly, this is already a recognised part of SEO however, with this increased level of personalisation as offered by Google, will digital markers need to dedicate time to becoming not SEO optimised but AI optimised instead?
The upshot is that the opposite will be true for customer retention and current customers who will almost certainly be steered towards your brand if they have purchased from you before.
What’s on the horizon?
While Magi is set to go live within weeks, there are plenty of other AI projects which Google has in the pipeline such as the text-to-image AI generator GIFI and personal AI browsing companion Searchalong.
Although the primary function of these advancements will be to improve user experience, there is perhaps a much larger discussion to be had regarding the use of AI within the digital marketing landscape. However, this is not the blog for that!
We promise to go full tinfoil hat regarding the potential dangers for AI in an upcoming blog but for the meantime, keep an eye out for more insights into AI and digital marketing here at Siren and fire us a follow on LinkedIn!
