The privacy-focused search engine Brave has announced a significant upgrade to its platform, integrating artificial intelligence to provide users with more comprehensive and streamlined search results. The new “Answer with AI” feature, launched on Wednesday, is now available globally, marking a pivotal shift in the way Brave approaches information retrieval and presentation.

At its core, the “Answer with AI” capability aims to revolutionize the search experience by leveraging advanced language models to generate concise and neatly formatted answers to a wide range of queries. Whether users are seeking information on historical events, such as “People who walked on the moon,” or exploring pop culture topics like “List of all actors who played Batman,” the AI-powered engine promises to deliver relevant and condensed responses. Even practical inquiries like “How to descale Nespresso pixie” or summaries of restaurant reviews will be handled with precision and clarity.

This development builds upon Brave’s previous foray into AI-driven search enhancements, introduced in March 2023 with an AI-powered summarization feature. However, the company emphasizes that the newly launched “Answer with AI” represents a significant leap forward, offering a more comprehensive and sophisticated solution to users’ information needs.

According to Brave, the integration of AI into its search functionality is a direct response to user demand for more concise and digestible information. For informational queries, the AI-powered answers will be presented automatically, while for other types of searches, users can manually trigger the “Answer with AI” feature.

Under the hood, Brave’s “Answer with AI” employs a sophisticated combination of large language models (LLMs) and reliable data sources. Specifically, the company utilizes Mixtral 8x7B and Mistral 7B as its primary models, complemented by custom transformer models designed for semantic matching and answer generation.

Josep Pujol, Brave’s head of search, explained the mechanics behind the AI-powered search: “The user only needs to enter a query as they are used to doing with a regular search engine. The query will then be internally converted to an LLM prompt using the data from search results as context to the prompt, with typical RAG (retrieval augmented generation).”

While the introduction of AI-powered search promises to enhance the user experience, concerns have been raised about the potential impact on the broader web ecosystem. Multiple reports have highlighted the grave effects that AI-augmented search could have on the future of the internet, particularly for publishers and content creators who rely on website traffic for their livelihoods.

Brave, which serves over 10 billion queries annually, acknowledges these concerns and has pledged to monitor and quantify the impact of AI-generated content on-site visits. The company recognizes the potential disruptions that a drop in traffic could cause and has committed to addressing these challenges proactively.

“This challenge is not unique to Brave Search but present across most AI-powered answer engines and chatbots, premium or open. Brave, as both a browser and search engine, is aware of these challenges. Consequently, we will be monitoring and quantifying the impact of AI-generated content on site visits, and eventually will address the disruptions that the drop in traffic could cause,” the company stated.