When You Should—and Shouldn’t—Use AI to Search the Web

If you've interacted with the likes of Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini, you've noticed that in addition to everything else they do, these AI chatbots can search the web for you. Depending on what you’re looking for, it can be easier to find more relevant results through a chatbot, which may explain why Google is so keen to push AI Mode for its own search engine.

When asked to search the web, the latest versions of these bots are combining elements of traditional web search (they're essentially just googling on your behalf) with knowledge they are able to pull out of their training data. Everything is then packaged and formatted in the now-familiar, polished generative AI style.

It's the added AI elements on top of the traditional googling where the differences come in, and that means AI-powered search may not always be the best option.

When to Use AI for Web Search

If you're looking up something simple and widely known—like the height of the Empire State Building—then AI search is a pretty safe bet. Not only is information like this easy to access online, the “autocorrect” probability patterns favored by large language models mean there's a near-certain chance that the results you see will include the right information.

If you just need a quick look-up, AI is OK. The more obscure the question, though, the closer you need to look at the answer. If you've asked something less well known, like the fifth-billed actor in an obscure television show, there might only be one or two references to it on the web, and an AI might choose the wrong one.

One of the takeaways from recent Stanford University research is that when AI finds an accurate source, it's very good at pulling the right information out of it. Where it tends to fall down is in not finding accurate sources (either because there aren't any or because the query has been misinterpreted) and presenting a confident answer anyway.