Using AI to answer questions narrows the skill gap between users with high vs. low education, relative to using Google. With the traditional search engine, users with graduate degrees strongly outperformed less-educated users, whereas the difference was much smaller when users employed ChatGPT to answer questions.

On all three metrics, AI chatbots handily beat search. When performance differences exceed 100%, people start paying attention and modify even long-ingrained behaviors. Google benefited from this effect in the late 1990s when it outcompeted Yahoo, Excite, Altavista, and a bunch of other more established, but weaker, search engines by the simple expedient of delivering better answers, faster.

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The main difference between the free and the paid Perplexity services is that the paid version provides answers that are summarized across a broader range of web sources, which again means that they are better and more insightful than the free answers.

AI is generally faster (as proven by the more extensive quant study I cited above) and provides more valuable answers than search engines. Of course, search engines can turn into AI chatbots, and this may be happening. But the basic services have clear differences:

Search identifies information sources that contain possible answers and ranks them by estimated quality, with the best sources on the top. Supplementary information is not provided, nor does the search provide analytical commentary on the answer.

In contrast, AI is like a friendly and competent butler who presents the Lady of the House with a single sheet with the recommended plan for a dinner party. All the information is right there, including issues she might not have thought to bring up but which the butler remembers from having organized hundreds of previous dinners.

Getting answers from AI is like being the Lady of a Great House, receiving the plan for a dinner party from her trusted butler. The list of dishes to be served and the suggestions for where to seat the guests are all prepared with knowledge of the house, the host, and the guests. (Midjourney.)

Sadly, the history of the Internet suggests that we may soon be spammed by ads in our AI tools. In my butler analogy, I guess this would be like the butler replacing his nice black-tie outfit with the kind of advertisement-infected uniform worn by Formula-One race drivers.

On balance, neither interaction has perfect usability, but for straightforward questions, AI wins. And for complicated questions, search often fails so miserably that AI also wins, even if this is more due to its ability to synthesize a good customized answer than because of the usability of the query itself.

Net outcome: websites should expect a dramatic decline in SEO-driven traffic in the next few years. Prepare now! Read the follow-up article, Website Survival Without SEO in the Age of AI.

Summary: Unlike search, which just identifies and ranks potential information sources, AI synthesizes a single clear answer from all available info, tailored to the user\u2019s specific query and circumstances. AI also provides clarifying details, analysis, and supplementary information as part of its answers.

I\u2019ll start by admitting that my headline exhibits some hyperbole, as is required to attract clicks these days. SEO is not dead yet, but it has one leg in the grave. For another year or two, many users will still look to their trusted legacy search engines when they are in search of answers. But this behavior ingrained in users for 30 years will gradually be replaced by users turning to AI services that provide better answers, faster.

Since the launch of Google in 1998, search has been the leading portal to the web\u2019s riches. For 25 years, users have been trained to go to a search engine when they need an answer. (Search by Dall-E.)

In this study, answer quality was the same between the two solutions. However, the AI corner was represented by ChatGPT 3.5, which is notoriously weaker than the current version, ChatGPT 4, let alone the answer quality we might expect from next year\u2019s ChatGPT release.

I have switched my answer-seeking allegiance to Perplexity.AI, which I use for most information-seeking queries. (I have no economic interest in recommending Perplexity.AI; I do so to help my readers.) Perplexity has a free version, which is reasonably good, but it becomes much better if you take out a $200/year subscription. I am happy to pay this, to keep the UI advertising-free, but I\u2019m double happy to pay up since the for-pay service is much better.

For example, let\u2019s look at a typical design problem for which a UX designer might seek advice: \u201CWhich way of asking for credit card expiration date on an e-commerce checkout form has the best usability?\u201D Here are the answers to this question from Perplexity and Google:

AI and the search engine both provide the correct answer: the credit card expiration date should be formatted as MM/YY on e-commerce checkout forms. Both also use the same sources: the Baymard Institute (the world\u2019s leading authority on e-commerce usability), Stack Exchange, and Smashing Magazine. Perplexity provides 3 additional sources for even more information.

Google wins in stating the answer concisely, but it also confuses matters by repeating erroneous options sourced from Stack Exchange. Perplexity wins by providing the most useful answer, including several usability guidelines that the user didn\u2019t ask about but which are crucial when designing this small component of the e-commerce checkout flow, such as the need to allow shoppers to edit stored card information. Perplexity also wins by explicitly warning against the low-usability solution of using dropdown menus for data input \u2014 a bad design we encounter much too often on the web and which Google confusingly mentions as an option.

Overall, this example doesn\u2019t have a clear winner. Still, Perplexity is my preferred choice because it is more helpful to designers and provides clear links to more information about each of the provided guidelines.

Both services provide follow-up questions that can be answered at the click of the mouse (or a single tap, dramatically lowering interaction costs for mobile users). However, in this example, neither set of follow-up questions is particularly useful. (Perplexity\u2019s follow-up questions were cut off in the above screenshot due to the length of its primary answer.)

AI synthesizes one clear answer from all the available information. It provides clarifying information, supplementary information, and analysis \u2014 all as parts of a single short article.

Thus, AI saves users from performing their own synthesis, as is required when using search. AI also mentions additional issues that users had not thought to ask about. When using search, users can hope to stumble across such additional relevant considerations about their problem, but they\u2019ll also have to wade through a morass of irrelevant information.

Most important, AI writes a short, individualized article specifically for that one user to explain how the answer relates to that user\u2019s circumstances, which the AI knows from the \u201Ccustom instructions\u201D (in ChatGPT) or other earlier specifications provided by the user. AI can also adjust the readability level of the custom article to the user's literacy level, giving more complex answers to highly-educated users.

AI answers are superior because AI writes a short new article just for you, synthesizing the most important information about your question, including points you didn\u2019t think to ask about. (Dall-E.)

(The current early AI systems sometimes go overboard with such individualization of the answers. For example, I asked Perplexity about the weather in Paris in May. Besides providing the requested information, it added, \u201CAs a UX researcher, you might appreciate the fact that the weather conditions in May provide a great opportunity to observe and interact with the local culture in a comfortable outdoor setting. The pleasant weather encourages outdoor activities, and you can expect to see Parisians soaking up the sun in parks or enjoying the city's many outdoor cafes.\u201D Yes, I had told it that I\u2019m a UX researcher, but I go on vacation in Paris to see art and ballet and to eat, not to conduct field research.) 152ee80cbc

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