Understanding the difference between generative AI and search engines

Generative AIs such as ChatGPT are based on language models designed to understand human language, and to generate textual content: these tools have therefore not been designed like web search engines such as Google, their primary function being content generation and not document retrieval. Their operation differs from that of web engines, both in the way they are queried and in the nature of their responses.

Let's recall how classic web engines work: thanks to their robots, they crawl the web, storing the contents of billions of pages and enabling users to find pages relevant to a search generally formulated in the form of keyword queries. Answers are provided in the form of a list of links to web pages ranked according to their relevance, calculated using complex algorithms. In recent years, web engines have added artificial intelligence algorithms to this classic...