What Should Happen With California’s AI Regulation Bill?

Some of AI’s biggest players, like OpenAI or Meta, aim to make a big splash when announcing their latest model or feature. But Google, which has been refining how AI works in search, has made many of its improvements and rolled them out quietly. BrightEdge, an SEO and search engine consultant, released a new report today detailing some of the ways Google’s AI Overviews in search are changing—and trying to stay ahead of other AI-native search engines including OpenAI’s Search GPT and Anthropic’s Perplexity.

The report, shared exclusively with Forbes, found that Google’s AI search overviews are getting taller—increasing in height by about 10% between July and August. They’re also getting more specialized, with the overviews increasingly pulling from industry-specific sources. For example, citations for USA Today’s website dropped 10.3%, and they went down 3.1% for the New York Times’ site. Links to tech review sites also dropped, with TechRadar getting 47.3% fewer hits, and Tom’s Guide seeing 16.4% fewer citations. And for health queries, more searches are referencing respected medical agencies—like the National Institute of Health seeing 83.2% more hits, and Verywell Health seeing a drop off of 77.9%. The cited sources are also now displayed in a separate box and easier to be individually clicked on.

Users logged into Google are also seeing more photo comparison carousels for e-commerce searches. BrightEdge found these increased 172%, and unordered lists for general items searched for increased 42%. The report states that this does more to organize products by their features, and helps users make easier comparisons when shopping—which could be key to helping users find holiday gifts as the end of the year draws closer.

The question remains whether users are taking note of these changes, and if it’s enough for them to stay loyal to Google for search. They’re presenting themselves more fully to people who are logged into Google’s services: BrightEdge found 90% fewer AI overviews popping up for non-logged-in users’ e-commerce-related searches. Google has been making moves in AI beyond search as well. This week, the company made the Gemini Live AI voice assistant available for free to all English-language Android users. And much more—from Google and its new and old competitors—is likely to come soon.

California’s General Assembly has tackled and passed several bills to regulate AI. Some were signed into law earlier this week by Governor Gavin Newsom. One particular bill, SB 1047, has been more controversial than others, and many in the industry are waiting to see what Newsom does with it. I talked to Atin Sanyal, CTO at AI evaluation firm Galileo, about his perspective on the legislation. An excerpt from our conversation is later in this newsletter.

Source URL: Forbes