Gartner® Research: “What Impact Will Generative AI Have on Search?”

By Stephen Emmott, Hao Yin, Arun Chandrasekaran, Mike Lowndes. Published on June 14th, 2023.

Generative AI is shifting both capability and expectation from retrieval to synthesis of information; reactive to proactive delivery.

What impact will generative AI have on search?

Search is a wide and complex topic representing many constituencies and their interests. Broadly speaking, it can be approached as both an experience and as a technology.

Insight engines combine search with AI to deliver actionable insights derived from the full spectrum of content and data sourced within and external to the enterprise.

Search as an Experience

When we talk about search, it is important to recognize that search experiences vary across many constituents and their use cases, which are served by numerous vendors, many of whom have offerings across several use cases:

As an experience, search will recede behind the user interface for the majority of citizens, customers and employees. Their need for insight — the understanding required to know, decide and act — will be increasingly met through proactive synthesis of information delivered through conversational interfaces and visual navigation: facts in context, delivered automatically.

As a technology, search will augment generative AI to power the synthesis of information to humans, or data to machines. Generative AI, in isolation, is neither an alternative to nor replacement for current search technologies.