Step aside, Perplexity. There's a new ai-powered search engine in town, and its creators believe it can outperform many, many other attempts out there.
Called ai/”>Genspark, the platform leverages generative ai to write personalized summaries in response to search queries. Type a search like “What is the best formula for newborn babies?” and Genspark will generate a Sparkpage: a single page overview composed of websites and web content.
It's a similar experience (notably) to the Arc Search feature in the Arc browser, which launched earlier this year, and to Google's ai overviews in Google Search. But Eric Jing, co-founder of the eponymous organization behind Genspark with Kay Zhu in 2023, says Genspark can deliver higher quality results by taking a more surgical approach.
“Genspark uses multiple specialized ai models, each designed to address specific types of queries,” Jing told TechCrunch. “Sparkpages are very similar to a distillation and consolidation of the current web; We also enrich them with complete data and, to users, it looks like an index of the existing web.”
At its core, Genspark relies on internally trained models as well as third-party models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and others to categorize users' search queries and determine how to organize (and present) the results. A basic ai-generated summary appears at the top of each results page, followed by a much more detailed link to Sparkpage.
For example, for travel-related searches, Genspark will offer a Wikipedia-like Sparkpage with a table of contents, videos of popular nearby destinations, tips, and a chatbot to answer questions on various subtopics (e.g., “List the best cultural sites”) . experiences”). Meanwhile, product searches on Genspark generate Sparkpages with a list of pros and cons of the product under discussion, as well as comments and reviews aggregated from social networks, publications and e-commerce stores.
“Our ai models favor websites with high authority and popularity, which goes a long way in filtering out the most available information,” Jing said.
Much has been written about ai-generated overviews gone wrong. Google's ai overviews infamously suggested putting glue on a pizza. Arc Search told a reporter that the severed toes ai-no-guardrails”>it will eventually grow back. and perplexity ai-search-engine-perplexity-is-directly-ripping-off-content-from-news-outlets/”>cheated articles written by outlets such as CNBC, Bloomberg and Forbes without credit or attribution.
So, has Genspark solved all the security and accuracy issues? Well, not entirely.
Genspark didn't tell me to make a pizza with glue, nor did it insist that there be ai-overview-fails-442575″>health benefits of running with scissors, or that former US president Barack Obama practices Islam. But the search engine did recommend some weapons that ai/spark?id=471d06f3-1b96-3945-90ab-b01d224520c6″>could use to kill someone.
Ethically questionable search results are not the only controversy Genspark faces. This and similar platforms threaten to cannibalize traffic to the sites where they get their information.
In fact, they already are.
One study found that ai overviews could ai-overviews-internet-traffic-ebb6bbbde17ed29a5f7b630d9e5e285b”>negatively affect around 25% of publishers' traffic due to the lack of emphasis on links to web pages. On the income side, an expert cited by The New York Post tech/google-upgrades-search-engine-ai-191321804.html”>My dear that ai-generated summaries could generate more than $2 billion in losses for publishers thanks to the resulting decline in ad views.
I couldn't find examples of outright plagiarism on Genspark, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Sparkpages, like Wikipedia pages, are not static. After Genspark's ai creates the schema, anyone can share and edit copies of a Sparkpage and add any information they want, including things that are offensive, incorrect, or plagiarized.
What's more, at least at this time, there is no way to report problematic Sparkpages.
Jing says Sparkpages are open and editable by design to allow users to verify claims, and that Genspark's ai systems take each edit into account to improve results in the future. He also says that Genspark plans to license copyrighted content, including publisher content, where it makes sense, with the goal of improving the engine's overall accuracy.
“We take data quality seriously and believe data quality is the key to winning this race,” Jing said. “Respect for intellectual property is a fundamental value.”
How much will Genspark pay for the intellectual property? That is still to be resolved. So is Genspark's business model: Jing says the platform will introduce “premium features” in the future, but specific details are up in the air.
Although Genspark is in the early stages in terms of its roadmap and has major technical, as well as legal and ethical, obstacles ahead, the startup managed to close a large seed round of $60 million, led by Singapore-based venture capital firm Lanchi. Companies with a post-money valuation of $260 million.
Jui Tan, managing partner at Lanchi, called Genspark's approach “really compelling” and said he had confidence in Jing and Zhu's technical direction, pointing to both of their previous experiences building artificial intelligence and search products.
Jing was previously a development manager on Microsoft's Bing team and chief product manager at Chinese tech giant Baidu's core search and artificial intelligence divisions. Zhu, also a former Google and Baidu employee focused on search, partnered with Jing four years ago to launch Xiaodu, a hardware startup that builds smart devices similar to amazon Echo.
“Eric and Kay are seasoned serial entrepreneurs with a proven track record in developing successful products and businesses, particularly in the artificial intelligence and search domains,” Tan told TechCrunch. “Their team's extensive experience uniquely positions them to drive breakthrough innovations.”
But I think it's an uphill battle.
Assuming for a moment that Genspark can iron out the teething kinks of its technology, identify a revenue generation plan, and scale its small team (~20 people) based in Singapore and the Bay Area, none of which are easy tasks , face intense competitive pressure from rival startups with hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank, not to mention traditional search operators like Google.
So can Genspark In fact Survive the bad optics and failed marketing strategies that have plagued other ai-powered search engine attempts? And can it find a place in a future where, say, OpenAI? ai-powered-search-engine-next-week—heres-what-we-know/”>release a comparable tool?
I am not convinced. But Jing insists that it can be done.
“Many Internet users, especially those who are younger than Google, don't want to simply be given a list of links and then left to discover the rest on their own, while they browse sponsored content and SEO-driven content that game the system. . Jing said. “They want to find what they need faster, they want more visual results, and they want to know that the results are reliable. With ai we can achieve all that and we have launched Genspark to meet those needs.”
