Bloomberg reported today that “Amazon Plans to Add ChatGPT-Style Search to Its Online Store” and said this move “rivals Microsoft, Google efforts to infuse search with AI”

I’d speculate that search can’t get any worse than it is but that’s not right. I could be worse, far worse.

Let’s start with today, the “before” picture, before everyone gets into the chatty personal assistant that knows more about you than you even do about yourself.

(What do you think about the quality of search today, from Amazon, Google, Yelp and others? How often does it disappoint, confuse or waste your time?)

I for one have been severely disappointed in recent years with the kind of results that I get from Amazon Search, Google Search, and others primarily because their goal is making money on advertisements, to heck with what I need. And it shows up systematically.

Just as an example, it’s getting harder and harder to find what you want on Amazon. Even when you’re really specific with your needs, they still fill the screen with crap that’s getting harder and harder to discriminate from the good stuff. There must be a pony in the corral but I can’t see it.

Last year, under the title “The Google Ads predictive analytics’ business impact story”web.archive.org/web/20221204110546/http…

I did an extensive analysis of Google Search’s utility for enterprise technology decision-makers and found a similar situation.

In my summary, I wrote ‘What do you get from Google Ads? I asked Google can or do “predictive analytics improve business performance” and gathered up the ads it returned. From a buyer’s perspective, these results aren’t good. Sellers could do much better as well.’

Go read the note! No ads and no charge. Dig into the 24 ads that popped up in response to my Google Search Query summarized in ‘Table 1. Advertisements returned by Google Search for the string “predictive analytics improve business performance” on 24 February and 2 March 2022.’

If I were the advertisers, I would be embarrassed to show the content they offered. Suppose you were a business decision maker looking for material related to the search string do (or can) ‘predictive analytics improve business performance?’

Same thing for Amazon. Write to me asking for examples if you really need some.

So how will chattification (a la GPT3 or now.com or other similar LLM technologies) impact your life?

I imagine, best case, that it will be deja vu all over again. I recall IBM Watson “demos” in 2013 and 2014, showing how you and Watson could have a dialog about your vacation needs and, voila, like magic, Watson would come up with a wonderful solution to your many, and conflicting needs. That worked so well everyone is now talking about the great vacation-planning chatbots, right? No? I’m really not surprised. Almost a decade since those demos…we’re still waiting, eh?

How is it going to be different? A lot more smoke (you don’t know what’s going on behind the screen) and mirrors (false promises abounding) but I’m convinced this new generation of LLM-based bots are orders of magnitude better (when they’re not confabulating) than anything promised several years ago.

But what does this do to the business models of the firms rushing to take advantage of chattification — LLM-based chattification — to better understand your needs and give you something you’ll buy?

Great, Responsive, Empathetic Agent Talent (GREAT) can make your day. Confabulators will drive you nuts as, perhaps, they steal insights from your input and sell them back to sellers.

But what does all of this do for the revenue streams of the Googles and Amazons of the world?

We’re in for an interesting period as GREAT chatters proliferate, ad penetration drops and new business models emerge. What comes out at the other end of this evolutionary process?