1.5 billion people see Google's AI Overviews each month
Google just touted some big numbers regarding its AI Overviews feature during its I/O conference. On the stage, company CEO Sundar Pichai said that the service has 1.5 billion monthly users. That's around 18 percent of the total human population of planet Earth, give or take.
For the remaining 82 percent of humanity, AI Overviews are those little recaps that appear at the top of Google queries. These primarily appear when the search engine is asked a question, with the company saying they only show up for more complex questions, where the systems recognize that they're helpful beyond what the rest of the results page offers.
We asked the company what that 1.5 billion number actually means, being how the recaps spawn automatically. Google responded by saying the number is a measure of people who have seen AI Overviews in their results. It also noted that the overwhelming majority of these users engage with the service in some meaningful way. The company continued by saying that users are interacting with it, which leads them to "search more often."
Google says that Overviews are driving a 10 percent increase in search engine usage, with regard to the types of queries that show AI-generated results. The biggest markets for this feature are the US and India. Back in October, Google pledged to bring the platform to 100 new countries and hoped to one-day reach one billion users per month. It looks like the company has sailed past that.
The company has also been busy bringing it to even more regions. All told, Overviews is available in more than 200 countries and in 40 languages. It's even been testing a similar service for YouTube.
Of course, this is AI. The Overviews feature may be inching toward omnipresence, but that doesn't mean it's always correct. The service has been known to make stuff up, get things wrong or just act plain goofy.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
St. Charles Public Schools gets ready to adopt AI training for teachers
Jun. 9—ST. CHARLES, Minn. — As artificial intelligence continues to advance at a breakneck speed, St. Charles Public Schools is trying to keep up with the new technological changes in its classrooms by giving teachers more resources. On Monday, the district is set to approve the purchase of a new training program from the company, Gruvy Education, to help teachers keep up with the AI revolution. According to Superintendent Robert Routh, it's not just a matter of making sure students maintain academic honesty in their work, but also about preparing them for a world where they will encounter artificial intelligence in their lives. "It's our responsibility as a school system to give them the skills that they're going to need," Routh said about teaching students how to adapt to AI usage. "If we don't, we're doing our kids a major disservice of not exposing them to it and adapting with the times." The district is paying a base amount of $4,000 for the training, with an additional charge of $30 for each person taking it. Schools have been trying to adapt to the advent of artificial intelligence tools for several years now, since the tech organization OpenAI launched the program ChatGPT. The program allows users to ask even complex questions with the gratification of near-immediate answers. It also allows users to generate large amounts of written work, meaning students could use it to find shortcuts to class assignments. Routh described the onset of AI tools as the "new Google." "It's the new tool that we have to find new ways to manage and to figure out how it's going to work within our students' lives," Routh said. "Our kids are going to be a part of the journey with AI for their work life and their personal life. So now, as a school system, we have to decide what kind of influence we're going to have on its use." According to Routh, the training program St. Charles is adopting will help teachers educate students about the appropriate use of AI tools, such as ChatGPT. One of the ways the district is going to be doing that is by asking teachers to devote at least one unit of class to the application of AI. Even though the training is ultimately in service of the students, it's expected to have benefits for the teaching staff as well. An outline of the program says that "teachers who complete the training save an average of 3.23 hours per week on preparation and administrative tasks." "(It's) teaching a teacher how to also use it," Routh said about the training program. "In order for them to be comfortable with it, they have to adopt it in their own lives at some level."
CNBC
2 hours ago
- CNBC
Apple's WWDC underwhelms on AI, but software gets biggest facelift in over a decade
Apple's annual developer conference on Monday lacked the splashy announcement that fans are used to seeing at WWDC. There was nothing like the Vision Pro reveal from 2023 or the Apple Intelligence announcement last year. But there was an important software update that, later this year, will change the way all of Apple's major devices, from iPhones and Mac laptops to Vision Pro virtual reality headsets, will look. It's a new design language that runs across all of Apple's operating systems. The company is calling it Liquid Glass. For Apple, it's the first significant redesign of its iPhone operating system since 2013, when the company announced iOS7. Apple says the lock screen will look like it's made out of glass. Buttons will turn into little glass pills, fluidly sliding over glass rails. And there are new animations, including when answering a phone call. The unveiling underwhelmed Wall Street, which sent the stock down 1.2% on the day. Investors are pressuring Apple to make big changes to its artificial intelligence strategy, pushing it to match the frontier models capabilities of rivals such as Google and OpenAI. "Many of the AI features announced were more incremental in our view, and already available through competitor applications," UBS analyst David Vogt wrote in a note on Monday. He has the equivalent of a hold rating on the stock. Last year, Apple announced Apple Intelligence, its response to ChatGPT, complete with a demo of a "more personal" Siri that could intelligently parse through emails and messages to figure out the best time to make a restaurant reservation. Apple delayed the feature in March, had to pull ads that depicted it, and provided no update on timing on Monday. "This work needed more time to meet our high quality bar," Apple software chief Craig Federighi said on Monday. He restated the company's "the coming year" timeline. Apple's focus at WWDC was on providing new features and animations across its software that are "delightful," in CEO Tim Cook's words. The new design language is heavy on transparent buttons, sliders, and other interaction elements. Users will be able to spot it as soon as they upgrade their phones to the new iOS, which will be available for beta testing this summer. Instead of hard, sharp corners in rectangular windows, Apple's new design language has curved corners that match the device. One reason Apple gave for rolling out the update now is that its computers and chips have become powerful enough to handle it. Apple said that its new look was directly inspired by the look of VisionOS, the company's software for Vision Pro. "Apple Silicon has become dramatically more powerful — enabling software, materials and experiences we once could only dream of," Federighi said in a recorded video. As with many Apple announcements, reactions are all over the map. Some people on social media were excited while others compared the update to the look of Windows Vista, which was released in 2007. While Apple didn't make many significant changes to the Siri experience, the company did introduce a few significant improvements and changes to its AI capabilities. Apple also expanded its integration with OpenAI's ChatGPT, integrating its image generation capabilities into an app that previously only used Apple's technology. When a user takes a screenshot on an iPhone, a new button will send the image to ChatGPT, which can summarize blocks of text in the image, or even decipher what's happening. One major improvement Apple is rolling out is in language translation. During a phone call between two people who don't speak the same language, the phone app can translate a sentence after it's spoken and use an AI-generated voice to speak to the other party in the their language. Apple says the feature uses AI processed on the iPhone and doesn't require a connection to a server. In some corners of the Apple fan universe, the most notable announcement on Monday may involve a simple number. Since 2007, Apple had introduced a new version of its iOS every year. By 2024, Apple was on iOS 18. It's a meaningful number for users who want to know if they have the latest Apple features, and some 82% of users with recent iPhones had upgraded to iOS 18 within a year. Now, Apple is naming its operating systems for the iPhone and other devices after the year that they'll be available for use by most consumers. In this case, it's 2026. In September, users will upgrade to iOS 26. Apple also has iPadOS 26, WatchOS 26, tvOS 26 and Vision OS 26. The name change will simplify how to refer to the various operating systems, which had gotten confusing given that each device was on a different generation. It also keeps the pressure on Apple to keep rolling out an update every year, or else the number will make it clear that its software is outdated.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Hyundai pitches hybrids as ‘Best of Both Worlds' in Paris, Texas
This story was originally published on Marketing Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Marketing Dive newsletter. Hyundai launched a marketing campaign, 'Best of Both Worlds,' in support of its Sante Fe and Tuscon hybrid vehicles, per a press release. Two ad spots and two long-form videos feature a French cowboy who lives in Paris, Texas and drives Hyundai's hybrids. A separate campaign, 'He Got Money,' focuses on fuel savings and is targeted at an African-American audience. The campaigns, from Innocean USA and Culture Brands, respectively, come as the automaker has seen hybrid vehicle sales increase 44% so far in 2025, despite ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty. Hyundai is going all-in on its hybrid vehicles with a pair of ads that mix humor and value propositions like performance and savings. The automaker has seen a big boost in hybrid vehicle sales, with total hybrid vehicle sales jumping 5% in May, per details shared with Marketing Dive. The 'Best of Both Worlds' effort focuses on Jean-Luc, a cowboy born in Paris, France who lives in Paris, Texas. A 30-second 'Cowboy' spot which debuted on June 8 during the NBA finals focuses on the Sante Fe Hybrid and shows how the titular character can have 'more cheese' on his plate by saving on fuel. 'Mosey' focuses on the Tucson Hybrid and will air later this month. In addition, a long-form YouTube spot has a cinematic feel, albeit one drawn more from Westerns and not Wim Wenders' art house classic 'Paris, Texas.' However, the campaign was filmed on location in the Texas town, and Hyundai will donate an estimated $30,000 from production to support local schools in the community. Created by Innocean with media by Canvas, 'Best of Both Worlds' will run across broadcast, digital and programmatic platforms, with custom digital content on TikTok, Meta, Reddit, YouTube and beyond. In a separate but related effort, Hyundai continued its series of 'Okay Hyundai' ads with 'He Got Money.' The 30-second ad focuses on a character who owns a hybrid and the gossip about his seemingly extravagant lifestyle, which — in a nod to ongoing price pressures — includes a fridge full of eggs. 'He Got Money' will run across broadcast and digital platforms in both 15- and 30-second formats and will be featured in influencer partnerships. The ad, which is targeted at an African-American audience, features Kathleen Bradley — best known as Mrs. Parker from the cult classic "Friday' — and is from Hyundai's African American agency of record, Culture Brands. ''He Got Money' shows how the Tucson Hybrid empowers drivers to enjoy more of what matters—style, comfort, and community—thanks to real savings at the pump,' said Erik Thomas, director of experiential and multicultural marketing, Hyundai Motor America, in a press release. Hyundai's increased hybrid sales follow the automaker becoming the launch partner of Amazon Autos late last year. One global auto brand moved approximately $80 million in annual ad spend from The Trade Desk to Amazon's ad platform by the end of Q1, partially due to its ability to sell its cars via the online retailer, Adweek reported. Hyundai is currently the only automaker that has that functionality on Amazon. Recommended Reading Mattel's Hot Wheels ignites 'challenger spirit' with cinematic ad
