Generative AI Features in Major Databases & Platforms

Google Scholar has introduced an experimental new search mode, Google Scholar Labs, which uses generative AI to conduct a deep search in response to your natural language query. Google Scholar's regular search mode remains available to use. Scholar Labs is a test feature that will continue to be developed over time. 

Scholar Labs is available in the menu bar at the top of the Google Scholar page:

After selecting the Labs link, you will be prompted to sign into Google Scholar with a Google account. Access to Scholar Labs is being rolled out in phases. If, after signing in, you do not have access, you will be able to sign up for a waitlist. According to Google, "Scholar Labs is an experimental feature and is as yet available to a limited number of users. This is a new direction for us and we plan to use the experience and feedback to improve the service."

Once you have signed in, if you have access to Scholar Labs, you will see the Scholar Labs homepage with some sample questions and a search box. You may enter a natural language question into the search box:

Scholar Labs analyzes your question to identify its key topics, aspects and relationships. It then runs multiple queries based on your question in Google Scholar. Then it ranks the results and displays the top results. Below each of your results, it provides a brief AI-generated summary explaining how it addresses your research question. Like Google Scholar's regular search results page, each result displays a number of links; some have a >> option you can select to view more links.

Before using one of these sources in your research, you should read the full text to make sure AI's summary was accurate. A box displays at the bottom of the page allows you to ask followup questions. 

By default, Scholar Labs will show you just the top-ranked results it matched to your query, but you can select More Results to prompt it to display additional results. Once it has provided a certain number of results, it will not allow you to generate any more results, as it displays only the results it calculates to be most relevant. You may use Google Scholar's regular search mode or other databases to find a greater number of results on your topic of interest. 

For more information, see the Google Scholar Blog post, Scholar Labs: An AI Powered Search.