AI Search

Full Definition

AI search refers to search systems that use large language models and retrieval-augmented generation to produce synthesized, conversational answers to user queries. Unlike traditional search engines that return ranked lists of links, AI search systems like ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Gemini generate answers that incorporate information from multiple sources, cite those sources, and present a unified response. For healthcare, AI search represents a shift in how patients access health information because they receive a synthesized answer first and may never visit the underlying source websites. Being cited as a source in AI search answers is the healthcare AI visibility equivalent of ranking on page one of traditional search.