Google Search Generative Experience Now Lets Users Create Images

Google is introducing new image creation capabilities to its Search Generative Experience (SGE), which is currently in beta. This new Search experience is currently only available in English, and it puts generative AI results at the top of the search results page.

Starting today, users who signed up to test this Search Generative Experience can now create AI-generated images by just typing what they want to create in the search bar. This is something that Google’s standalone Bard chatbot can’t do yet, but it makes sense to add image creation capabilities to the tool people already use to search for images.

After typing a specific image creation prompt and clicking the search button, the Google Search Generative Experience (SGE) will generate up to four images. Clicking on these images will show a detailed description of what’s in it, and users will be able to edit the text to tweak the image even further.

Google says that it has implemented safeguards to prevent users from creating harmful or misleading content. Moreover, every image created with the Google Search Generative Experience will have a watermark and metadata indicating that it was created using AI. Google also said that it’s also working on an “About this image” tool that will be able to inform users when an image and similar images were first indexed by Google.

Overall, Google is pretty much replicating what OpenAI’s DALL-E and Microsoft’s Bing Image Creator can do, though Google will be a bit more pushy about it. “If you’re opted into SGE, you may also see an option to create AI-generated images directly in Google Images, as part of this experiment. This feature is designed to appear when you’re searching for inspiration, like ‘minimalist Halloween table settings’ or ‘spooky dog house’ ideas’,” the company explained.

In addition to these new image creation capabilities, the Google Search Generative Experience now lets users create drafts right from the search bar. There are controls to make it shorter or longer and adjust its tone, and users can export the draft to Google Docs or Gmail if they want to.

Google’s Search Generative Experience is currently only available in the US, India, and Japan, and you can sign up for it on the Search Labs page on Google Chrome or the Google app for iOS or Android.