Google's SGE (Search Generative Experience), an AI-powered version of the classic Google search engine, recently underwent an important upgrade. For the first time, image generation and the option to generate text have been added.

SGE was first launched in May after being announced at Google I/O. SGE was designed as an experiment to see how generative AI features could be used to enhance the existing search experience. Needless to say, there have been many updates since then, including improvements in AI summarization and coding.

In short, it is clear that Google is working with a long-term perspective. The following are the new features.

First is AI image generation. This uses AI to create images based on user-provided prompts. This is made possible by Google's proprietary Imagen text-to-image model: when you tell SGE what you want, four different options appear in the search results, allowing you to view and download images at your leisure.

This feature has also been added to image search, giving Google the opportunity to "create" an image for you if you cannot find the one you want using traditional search methods. However, these features will be limited to users over the age of 18 in order to curb the surge of inappropriate content seen recently.

Google also told TechCrunch that strict filtering will be in place to prevent users from creating images that are "harmful, misleading, or explicit" or violate generative AI policies. The tool will also block prompts that create photorealistic faces or name celebrities. However, people will soon find ways around this.

Finally, the images will have metadata indicating that they were generated by AI and a visible watermark. This should be much more difficult to circumvent.

As for the new writing tool, it will allow SGE to create writing drafts for certain types of content, similar to the email writing tool already in SGE. This time, however, the AI will be able to produce many other types of writing in addition to e-mails. That is, it can request longer or shorter sentences and change its tone from serious to casual.

Both features also include an export tool that allows users to save text to Google Docs or Gmail, save images directly to a drive, or save them as PNG files.

These new SGE features are rolling out today and will likely take a few weeks to reach more users. However, only those who have opted in to use the SGE and live in the US will be able to use it.

If you would like to join and try out these new tools, along with everything else Google has added, be sure to check out our guide on how to sign up for Google Search Labs. This is the only way to check these out for the time being.