Are Chatbots Set to Replace Human SE Experts?

With the arrival of OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot, ChatGPT, in late November 2022, search engines now face tough competition. Since its release, Google and other search engine companies have stepped up their efforts to combat it.

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Is this technology going to disrupt the search engine industry? This question is on the minds of most tech enthusiasts. Here, we’ll discuss how ChatGPT differs from search engines and whether it is a threat to them.

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How Does ChatGPT Differ From Search Engines?

The most significant difference between ChatGPT and search engines is how they respond to user requests.

If you search for the query “how should you prepare for an interview” on any search engine, it’ll show you a list of relevant web pages explaining the topic. You may have to visit a single or sometimes several web pages to find an answer to your question.

In contrast, ChatGPT provides you with summarized answers to your questions directly. If you ask the same question about preparing for an interview from ChatGPT, the chatbot will give direct, straightforward advice.

Shortly put, ChatGPT can help you find a definite answer to any question without having to search through numerous web pages on search engines. So, the chatbot eliminates additional effort, answers your question more precisely, and saves you time.

However, it’s important to understand how ChatGPT works so that you can use it efficiently. By having a better understanding of how it was created and trained and how it generates responses, you will be able to make the most of it.

Why Hasn’t ChatGPT Affected the Search Engines So Far?

Despite ChatGPT’s immense popularity, it’s still not ready to significantly impact the search engine industry for several reasons. Here are a few of them:

1. ChatGPT Is Trained on a Limited Set of Data

ChatGPT has been trained on the information that was available until the end of 2021. When asking the chatbot about anything that happened in 2022 and later, it apologizes for not having that information.

Therefore, processing real-time information is the first significant hurdle ChatGPT needs to overcome to compete directly with search engines.

2. ChatGPT Can Generate Incorrect Response

Despite being AI-driven, ChatGPT often gives inaccurate responses. OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, admits that the chatbot sometimes generates inaccurate answers. The company has listed this shortcoming as one of the limitations of its product on its official blog.

3. ChatGPT Is Less Credible

On search engines, you know where information is coming from. Each time you search for something, you know the source of the webpage (i.e., brand or website). By putting in some effort, you can also check the authenticity of authors.

In contrast, ChatGPT doesn’t provide citations or references; it simply generates responses based on the raw data it is trained on.

You can sign up and start using ChatGPT in just a few minutes. If you haven’t tried it yet, take advantage of it to enhance your productivity. Although ChatGPT isn’t ready to disrupt the search engine industry just yet, does it have the potential to do so in the future?

Is ChatGPT Capable of Disrupting Search Engines in the Future?

Even though ChatGPT has some limitations, it has some strengths that make it an excellent candidate to disrupt the search engine industry. Let’s discuss a few of them.

On search engines, you have to wade through blogs comprising thousands of words to find answers to your questions; ChatGPT relieves you of that labor entirely. The chatbot answers your questions as concisely as possible and allows you to ask follow-up questions to learn more about your query.

Secondly, ChatGPT makes finding answers to your questions more engaging. Its interface is similar to that of instant messaging apps, and it responds to your questions with a conversational tone. The chatbot makes you feel like you’re talking to a friend.

Furthermore, ChatGPT keeps a record of your interactions with it. Thus, it responds to your questions according to the information it already knows about your issue or query.

For example, if you ask ChatGPT to write an essay on any topic and later ask it to keep the essay under 2000 words, the chatbot will know the topic on which you want it to write a 2000-word essay. Therefore, it won’t be necessary to write the subject again.

On the other hand, search engines give you results based on your queries, so you need to fine-tune your keyword selection to get the best results.

How Soon Could ChatGPT Significantly Impact the Search Engine Industry?

Despite ChatGPT’s potential to take a significant chunk of search engine traffic, it still has a long way to go to overcome its limitations.

Even if it begins to give answers by processing real-time data, provides sources of information, and always gives correct responses, the technology couldn’t negate the need for search engines.

One primary reason for that can be that people have been using search engines for decades— a behavior that has taken a long time to develop. Therefore, it may take time for people to digest this change and switch completely to a chatbot.

Secondly, ChatGPT is a large language model; as of right now, it cannot render visuals. So even though ChatGPT may excel at satisfying some search intents, it may still fall short in others.

For example, ChatGPT can quickly answer whether cats eat carrots since it is a solid fact. However, it may not effectively satisfy the search intent of some queries (such as how-to explainer guides) where users expect to see images alongside textual information.

Let ChatGPT Evolve

It will take time before people trust ChatGPT as they do on search engine results; it will be fascinating to see how this technology evolves.

Since Microsoft integrated the AI-powered chatbot into Bing and Google is adding chatbot features to its search engine, this integration may lessen the impact of ChatGPT on search engine traffic.

Have you tried ChatGPT? If you haven’t tried it yet, you should. Whether you need help writing an essay, generating code, composing an engaging email, or breaking down a complex topic, ChatGPT can take care of it all.

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