Google has quietly introduced a new AI Search experiment called Learn About, which summarizes content and offers navigational menus to explore related subtopics. This new way of exploring content uses drill-down navigational menus called Interactive Lists and if the user scrolls down far enough they will eventually find links to human created content.
This new way of searching encourages exploration with an interface that continually presents additional summaries and links to human-created content. The experience resembles a children’s “choose your story” book, where the narrative shifts based on the reader’s decisions.
Google’s Learning Initiative
The Learn About AI Search is offered as part of Google Labs. It’s also a part of Google’s Learning Initiative. The Learning Initiative page offers links to Google Labs projects that are related to learning.
The Learning Initiative contains links to various projects:
- Learn About
- Shiffbot
- Illuminate
- NotebookLM
Pilot Program (early access to AI products for 12 and higher education)
Experiments for Learning (AI learning tools that students can use to create songs or travel virtually to Mars)
The Google Learning Initiative page describes Learn About:
“Learn About
Grasp new topics and deepen understanding with this adaptable, conversational, AI-powered learning companion.”
Interactive List User Interface
Learn About’s Interactive List exploration menus are illustrated with images, which is appealing because humans are visually oriented. That makes it faster to comprehend the written content because the image reinforces the text.
The images in the interactive menu appear to be licensed from stock image providers like Shutterstock, Adobe, and Alamy. None of the images appear to be sourced from creator websites.
Screenshot Of Interactive List Navigational Menu
Questions trigger a summary and a drill down navigational menu that’s called an Interactive List. These search results lead to related topics and progressively granular summaries, more Interactive Lists.
Beneath the Interactive Lists is a section called “Explore related content” that offers links to actual human created content like YouTube videos and website content.
Beneath the links to creator content is a group of buttons labeled with options to Simplify, Go deeper, or Get images. Beneath those three choices are speech balloons with additional search queries on related topics.
Screenshot Of Explore Related Content Section
There is also a left-hand navigational menu with an invitation to explore using Interactive List menu.
Screenshot Of Left-Hand Navigation
Availability Of Learn About
Learn About is only available to users who are 18 or older in the United States and is available in in English.
Interestingly, it also answers questions in Spanish but then quickly erases the Spanish answer and replaces it with a statement that it doesn’t speak that language yet. But if you ask it a question in English followed by another question in Spanish then it may answer the question in English and provide links to Spanish language human created content. As shown in the image below, Google Learn About will not only understand and answer a Spanish language query.
Learn about will also understand it when the query contains a typo. The query below contains a typo of the word “comer” which is missing the letter “r.”
The Spanish language query I tried was “Es posible a comer el ojo de un pescado” which means, “is it possible to eat the eye of a fish?”
Screenshot Of Spanish Language Query In Learn About
Privacy Controls
Google’s Learn About has privacy controls that are explained in a consent form that must be agreed to before using Learn About.
It contains information about how Google handles questions, a warning to not ask questions of a personal and private nature and details about managing the information saved by Learn About. It also says that human reviewers may access information shared with Learn About but that it will be stripped of identifying information.
The consent agreement explains:
“Google stores your Learn About activity with your Google Account for up to 18 months.
You can choose to delete your Learn About data any time by clicking the settings button next to your Google account profile photo in Learn About and then choosing “Delete activity”.
To help with quality and improve our products (such as generative machine-learning models that power Learn About), human reviewers read, annotate, and process your Learn About conversations. We take steps to protect your privacy as part of this process. This includes disconnecting your conversations with Learn About from your Google Account before reviewers see or annotate them.
Please don’t enter confidential information in your conversations or any data you wouldn’t want a reviewer to see or Google to use to improve our products, services, and machine-learning technologies.”
Google Learn About And SEO
There is no hint about whether this will eventually be integrated into Google Search. Given that it’s a part of Google’s Learning Initiative it’s possible that it could become a learning-only tool.
Try Learn About, an experimental project of Google Labs.
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Cast Of Thousands