There's no such thing as "the nature of AI Search", our current understanding and hope for what it should be is being projected, but as long as there's attention, ads can be there.

Correct. OpenAI Search, Perplexity, et al are Answer Engines and not Search Engines.

The endgame is to increasing the organic look of the results. AI Search makes that possibly even though it is not reliable. Also, Google is probably under immerse pressure to "add AI" into to its products.

AI Everywhere is the new Everyone Can Code.

You noticed how no one talks about code bootcamps? LLM bootcamps will soon be popping all over the interwebz.

What 8K TVs are the best ?

Definitely go with Acme, they're our highest paying^W^W best performer in this segment.

Ads in the AI overview. That's always been the endgame for them here.

I wouldn't doubt that's the goal, though it seems risky. There's a fair chance the LLM could hallucinate details about your product and lead to it falsely advertising. Given Gemini's history recommending people eat glue, among other things, I wouldn't trust it with that responsibility.

Maybe even Ads trained into the AI itself?

Exactly. It's so trivially obvious I'm not sure why it's not more often remarked.

What's better than organic-looking ad insertions into results?

LLMs smart enough to invisibly weave ad buys into their results.

"What's the best ___?" -> $$$

> Ads in the AI overview. That's always been the endgame for them here.

The fundamental problem of ads is that they sell other things than we need. LLMs won't change that.

> I really don't understand what their endgame is here.

To not lose. History is full of stories of incumbents not wanting to cannibalize themselves and dying because of it.

It's necessary to defend search, even if this cannibalizes search it's better they do it than let someone else do it.

Ads for products and locations still show up (at least in the existing Overview).

> because by its very nature it bypasses most of the ads.

for now.

lmao exactly. OpenAI is burning $6 billion a year, it will need additional revenue streams. I would bet my car that they will introduce ads.

creative destruction.

They will kill their own product with constant innovation before someone else do.