Forbes Launches AI Search Engine, Offering Personalized Search Services

"Forbes" has launched a beta version of a generative AI search platform built on Google Cloud, aiming to provide personalized search for readers.

The platform, named Adelaide, is named after Adelaide, the wife of B.C. Forbes, the founder of Forbes. Readers can ask specific questions or enter general topics and receive recommended articles related to their queries and summary answers to their questions... as long as these contents fall within the scope of Forbes' coverage. Adelaide is trained based on Forbes' reports, but only covers news and ranking reports from the past 12 months.

Vadim Supitskiy, Chief Digital and Information Officer of Forbes, said the publication hopes to increase engagement with search and reporting.

Supitskiy said, "Our engagement with search has always been average, so we see this as an innovative opportunity to increase the number of users searching for information using generative AI."

Readers can click on the Adelaide button on the website (or go directly to the Adelaide testing page) and ask questions such as "Who is the richest person in Nebraska?" Adelaide uses Forbes' news, opinion articles, and ranking database to create a summary about Warren Buffett and display related articles that users may want to read. In the demonstration, Supitskiy also showed how people can continue the conversation with Adelaide through follow-up questions. The platform remembers previous questions and provides more information about Buffett and different articles.

Other media companies have also started to launch generative AI tools separate from AI-generated articles that have recently caused controversy. Last August, Macworld, PCWorld, Tech Advisor, and TechHive added an AI chatbot to their websites, allowing readers to ask questions based on their articles and get answers.

Supitskiy said that although Adelaide is Forbes' first generative AI tool, it is not the publication's first use of AI. In 2019, Forbes created a tool called Bertie, powered by AI, to provide Forbes' journalists with suggestions about their writing style. Both Adelaide and Bertie were built using Google Cloud tools. Supitskiy said that the publication built Adelaide based on Google's generative AI API. The company also launched a machine learning platform called ForbesOne in 2021 to help create personalized recommendations.

Forbes has high hopes for Adelaide, and although there is currently no comprehensive timetable for its full launch, Supitskiy hopes to eventually expand Adelaide's knowledge base to the entire archive since its founding in 1917.