Google today announced it will be rolling out improvements to its AI model to make Google Search a safer experience and one that’s better at handling sensitive queries, including those around topics like suicide, sexual assault, substance abuse and domestic violence. It’s also using other AI technologies to improve its ability to remove unwanted explicit or suggestive content from Search results when people aren’t specifically seeking it out.

Currently, when people search for sensitive information — like suicide, abuse or other topics — Google will display the contact information for the relevant national hotlines above its search results. But the company explains that people who are in crisis situations may search in all kinds of ways, and it’s not always obvious to a search engine that they’re in need, even if it would raise flags if a human saw their search queries. With machine learning and the latest improvements to Google’s AI model called MUM (Multitask Unified Model), Google says it will be able to automatically and more accurately detect a wider range of personal crisis searches because of how MUM is able to better understand the intent behind people’s questions and queries. Read More