Google Search Service Is Now Safer With New AI Model

JAKARTA - Google's artificial intelligence (AI) technology will soon be upgraded with the presence of a new model dubbed the Multitask Unified Model (MUM), especially for Google Search services that are more secure in handling sensitive questions from users.

Google itself categorizes sensitive questions such as the topic of suicide, sexual assault, substance abuse, and domestic violence.

Currently when people search for sensitive information such as suicide, harassment, or other topics Google Search will display the contact information for the relevant national hotline above its search results.

However, users are often looking for ways to keep the search results in their favor. With machine learning and the latest improvements to MUM, Google can automatically and more accurately detect various personal crisis searches, as MUM can better understand the intent behind people's questions.

Google explains how MUM's better understanding of user intentions can be leveraged to help web searchers unlock deeper insights into the topics they research, and direct users to new search paths.

For example, if a user searches for acrylic painting, Google may suggest “things to know” about acrylic painting, such as various techniques and styles, tips on how to paint, cleaning tips, and more.

"If we can't recognize it accurately, we can't code our system to show the most useful search results. That's why using machine learning to understand language is so important," Google said in an official statement quoted from TechCrunch, Thursday, March 31.

MUM also better understands longer search queries where the context is clear to humans, but not necessarily to machines.

Additionally, Google notes that MUM can transfer its knowledge to the 75 languages it has trained, which helps it to more quickly scale AI enhancements like this to users around the world.

This means that MUM can show actionable information from trusted partners, such as local hotlines, for these types of personal crisis searches to a wider audience. Previously, MUM has been used to improve the search for COVID-19 vaccine information.

In the coming months, it is claimed Google will use MUM to improve its spam protection features and will expand it to languages that have little training data. Other MUM upgrades will also be rolling out soon.