Brave Search unveils AI answer engine

Brave Search introduced a new AI answer engine called Answer with AI. It will produce AI-generated answers “synthesized” from multiple sources for any query.

What is Answer with AI. Answer with AI, as the name suggests, uses AI to generate answers to queries directly in the search results. This new Brave Search feature appears above the organic search results.

The format varies slightly, depending on the query type. At the bottom, Brave includes a section called Context, underneath which Brave links to the sources it used to generate its answer. Based on a small number of searches I conducted, Brave tends to pull most of its answers from the top-ranking pages.

It follows on from Brave’s AI Summarizer feature, introduced last year.

How Answer with AI works. When a user enters a query, Brave is using large language models (LLMs), primarily Mixtral 8x7B and Mistral 7B, data from its search results and RAG (retrieval augmented generation) to generate answers nearly instantly.

When will users see Answer with AI. For informational, question-like queries, Answer with AI will be the default experience. For other query types (navigational, commercial, transactional), Answer with AI will be optional – you will click on an Answer with AI button.

What it looks like. Here’s an example search for [what is after gen z]:

And here’s what it looks like for a vanity search:

But it’s not perfect. It thought I was the same person/entity as the former Major League Baseball player who shares my name.

Brave Search size. Brave Search has an index of 20 billion webpages, has more than 1 billion location-based schemas and serves:

• 27 million queries per day.
• 10 billion queries per year.

Answer with AI availability. It is available on all platforms (desktop and mobile) for all searches in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Searching in any other languages may return answers in English language.

What Brave is saying about AI answers. The big concern among SEOs and content creators is how AI answers in the search results could potentially impact the amount of traffic search engines send to websites. Brave addressed this concern, telling Search Engine Land:

• “Brave, as both a browser and search engine, is aware of these challenges. Consequently, we will be monitoring and quantifying the impact of AI-generated content on site visits, and eventually will address the disruptions that could be caused by the drop in traffic.”